It seemed I would never get to Rjukan; I had unfortunately missed all previous trips due to various other commitments and no one seemed psyched to go back this year. However I got in touch with Pete who seemed super keen and before we knew it we had 4 people (Pete, Nick, Lew and Me) together and a flight booked for the following Wednesday...this was on Monday!
After a late arrival into Oslo Torp last night we made it to Rjukan, with the help of winter tyres, in the earlier hours of the morning. After a quick scout of our accommodation we went to bed ready for our first day cranking on Norwegian ice!
After a late arrival into Oslo Torp last night we made it to Rjukan, with the help of winter tyres, in the earlier hours of the morning. After a quick scout of our accommodation we went to bed ready for our first day cranking on Norwegian ice!
The day started well; it took a few seconds to wonder why there was a jeep skidding towards us..oh yes, you drive on the right-hand side of the road here! We headed to Krokan to sample some of the single pitch routes to get into the swing of things. The crag is incredible and as you walk in you get a full view of most of the routes so psyche builds quickly! I jumped on Gaustaspokelse, a WI4 which turned out to be steeper than expected; the first half went swimmingly but my arms started to rapidly loose strength as I began the direct upper icefall in an earnest and enthusiastic way, and I ended up firing in a screw and slumping onto it about two metres from the top. After a quick rest and ego check I traversed slightly to the left to do some fun bridging moves up the remainder of the climb. I abbed off and Pete led the same line giving a good effort. I was hoping to be finding WI4 reasonable but this certainly wasn’t the case today! I’ll blame it on not sleeping well last night, driving for three and a half hours into the early hours of the morning and...being generally weak! Perhaps a good way to start a trip though. After some lunch and scoping about for what lines didn’t have a four person queue I headed up a variation line to the left of Bullen which was very good and going at about WI4- with lots of interesting climbing. I then set up an ab line and played about on the new camera for a while trying to get some good shots and video. My arms felt pretty gubbed and with six days of climbing still to come I was keen to retain some of my flailing strength so it was a relatively short day getting our bearings but incredible nonetheless and I’m super psyched for the rest of the week now!
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