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NEW ARTICLE: Lavagen Ice Climbing: Photo Report

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 UKC Articles 24 Mar 2010
[They start them young in Norway... family day in the sun at Flaget, 4 kb]Imagine a land where ice fills the valleys from November to April, where alpine ridges and huge icy walls rise from the sea, and where around every corner more potential awaits...

Sound like a winter climbing paradise? It not only exists, but is only a days travel from the UK...

Welcome to Arctic Norway!

Read more at http://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/page.php?id=2616

 TobyA 24 Mar 2010
In reply to UKC Articles: Great article and lovely photo. Spansdalen is covered in Rick McGregor's Ice Climbing in Lapland guide that is downloadable http://kiwiclimber.se/iceclimbing/iceguide/iceguide.pdf

Viv - what were avalanche conditions like when you were there? Had the cold weather meant lots of snow? Or not much snow? I'm going not too far from there at Easter and hope to climb and ski tour.
In reply to UKC Articles:

Great article. Really inspiring.

I have only climbed in Spansdalen and in another valley east of a town called Setermoen (in Bardu Kommune) and can attest to the high quality ice climbing. We went in February and it was cold, like -20.

On page 22 of the following .pdf guide http://kiwiclimber.se/iceclimbing/ you can find information on routes in Spansdalen.

We stayed in Narvik as it was hard to find accommodation.
 DanielJ 24 Mar 2010
In reply to UKC Articles: Inspiring article and quite a few "I wanna go there photos" in it. It would however be nice to know a little bit more about what kind of icefalls people climbed. Ex. besides Henrikafossen is there a lot of 200m+ falls in the region?

I was actually going there myself but got slight frostbite on my bigtoes in january so I gave it a miss. Looking at the pictures I´m not sure it was the right decision. Was there a lot of falls southfacing? Approx temps. during the week?

hopefully they´ll run something similar next year!
 vscott 24 Mar 2010
In reply to TobyA: Hi Toby,

As you probably know it was exceptionally cold in northern Norway this winter, and by the standards of the area pretty dry as well (not as much snow as usual). As a result there were no avalanche issues while I was there, but not sure what's happened of late. Still plenty enough snow to tour though and was right down to (and on) the sea.

Cheers for the guide link - very useful.
 vscott 24 Mar 2010
In reply to slob:
Hi,
People climbed all sorts of icefalls, from easy single pitches to long and steep and everything in between. Obviously the Hennrikkefossen as the 'classic' got a lot of ascents, but it's by no means alone. Most of the main lines in Spansdalen are at least 150m+, and there's loads more long lines tucked away in the surrounding valleys. As for Senja, the possibilities are numerous, long and impressive to say the least...

Temperature-wise, was bitterly cold to start with (-20 and below in the day with no wind), but there are south facing lines (Flaget lake all got the sun), as did other places. Warmed up a bit to daytime temps of around -5 ish for the last couple of days which was apparently more usual.
 TobyA 24 Mar 2010
In reply to vscott: My friend who's from up there just Facebooked me to say that there are reports of avalanche incidents all across the Troms area currently. Some Austrians got caught today in Lyngen, although reportedly they survived. So it sounds like it has been snowing since you were there - and anyone going up that way should take lots of care.
 Dave 24 Mar 2010
In reply to TobyA:

During the skiing season there is a very useful source of information on snow and avalanche conditions in the Lyngen / Troms area kindly provided by Graham at the Lyngen Lodge. Here http://lyngenlodge.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id...

My reading of it is that it is that the snowpack has generally been rather unstable but had been stabilising of late until the recent heavy snowfall and strong winds. There is an amazing picture of the solid wall of a snow shower rolling down the fjord here http://www.lyngenlodge.com/home/dailyreport see Mar 22 pic.

In reply to UKC Articles:

Ersfjord is in Kvaloya isn't it - not Senja?
Aidan13791 24 Mar 2010
In reply to UKC Articles:

norway looks amazing, never been but god, it makes our scottish winters look tame! deffo on my trip list for next year!
 TobyA 25 Mar 2010
In reply to Jonathan Lagoe - UKC: The main sport climbing area on Kvaloya is Ersfjord but I think it might be a common name. So Senja might well have one as well!
 ola.b 25 Mar 2010
In reply to Jonathan Lagoe - UKC:

Both islands have an "ersfjord". I'd stick to kvaløya for sport climbing though.

http://www.ngi.no/no/snoskred/Nyheter/Skredfareassistanse-til-Nord-Norge/

The warning says the contact group is NGI's duty phone for slides, 993 03 000

Its been a strange winter in Norway this year all the norms are out.

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