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The cold world of skimo & alpine climbing

The cold world of skimo & alpine climbing

Friday, December 17, 2010

Long, really cold, dark and it generally looks miserable :)

Better make the drive!


Ultima Thule Winter Ascent from Haukkari on Vimeo.

7 comments:

Djupnes said...

I climb on Kvaloya all the time, it's 20 mins drive from my house and one of the great winter climbing playgrounds of arctic Norway. Tons of alpine routes of various lenght

Dane said...

Hi Karl-Erik,
Can you give us any more details on this particular climb. Looks cold and dark :) But I love what appears to be a short approach!

best,
Dane

Anonymous said...

You might want to take a look at this: http://www.blixt.no/plog/index.php

Anonymous said...

and search for Ultima Thule.

Djupnes said...

August 1'st, Bjørn-Eivind Årtun and Oscar Alexanderson free climbed Ultima Thule on Blåmann, giving it a grade of solid 8. All pitches have the following grades: 8, 7-, 7+/8-, 8-, 8- and 7-. The route is very sustained and holds a very high quality on the both the climbing and the rock.

Djupnes said...

We are luckily blessed with short approaches up here, climbs often start from around 150 meters of elevation.
It's a coastal area so -13C feels a hell of alot colder because of the raw, salty air. The same humid sea air however makes the ice on kvaløya fantasticly plastic, often too plastic for screws.
All climbs on Kvaløya is on el-cap like granite so the climbs are usually well protected.
In desember and January there are only a few hours of daylight so we stick to short routes.
In late march/april it's northface season in the lyngen alps

saku said...

Hi Dave,

I'm sorry there aren't any subtitles, I didn't realize that others than Finns would be watching it...

Anyway we had great weather, and it wasn't too cold(-5-10 C). One of the difficulties was to get all our stuff to the wall. Approach is about 600 vertical meters of snow.

The winter crux was the sixth pitch, which shouldn't be that hard in the summer. Now the wall was covered with 1 cm of ice.

Here are some pics from the ascent, most of them are in the film as well.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30778574@N05/sets/72157607485868061/show/

cheers,

-saku