Norway

Alex and myself have been in Norway the last week with Guy, Audrey, and Matthieu. We arrived here on Feb 28 in the hopes to find big ice routes and film these climbers in their element. We met one of Guy's friend Marius at the airport. Marius is great he's giving us beta as to places to go and where the ice might be the best. We spent the first 5 days in Hemsedal. We climbed in Gol the first day to "warm up" and check out the local sport crag. Audrey on-sights the competition mixed route from their last ice festival and Guy climbs a really cool looking mixed line with a difficult ice finish.

The next few days we checked out a few ice routes. I was able to climb Seltunfossen 200m WI4+/5 with Guy, Matthieu, and Audrey and had a blast. The next day we hiked up to Hydnefossen 160m WI6. Audrey and Matthieu climbed the route while Guy soloed next to them. He fixed a rope for me to film him and got some great footage. I'll post a few clips here in the next day or two.

We were very comfortable in our cabin but the host kicked us out as he had reserved it for other people after us. So this made us leave this area and find some new ice. We drove to Eidfjord to see if there was any ice formed. The next morning we drove back up the canyon to see what was available. The first climb we saw looked pretty cool. A route high up that wasn't touching so it would make for a great mixed climb. We continued up the valley. I don't know how to explain what the next few miles had in store for us. We were kids in the candy shop. Every corner we turned and every tunnel we came out of opened a new face of ice. We're not talking short little ice climbs here. The majority of climbs we saw were at least 200m. One wall we scoped had 6 climbs in a row all classic routes and all around 250m.

Needless to say we will be staying in Eidfjord for the rest of our trip. Hopefully conditions will stay cold.

-chris