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Norway

With reliable Scottish winter's being a thing of the past, most hardened and dedicated ice junkies and cross country skiers have set their sights on Norway for guaranteed conditions and the advent of cheap travel has made a trip to this expensive country worth the effort. Here's a selection of reasons why Norway is now the winter 'package holiday' of choice.

Roadside Delight at Rjukan

By Kevin Howett

Having pretty much given up on winter climbing in Scotland over a decade ago, due to an unwillingness to endure any more pain and suffering (cold, wet weather not being conducive to enjoyment when one is full of sore old bones!), I was startled a few years ago when Alastair Todd rang up and proclaimed I was going to Norway with him. Cheap flights (£1 return) were booked, he said. Knowing my reluctance to walk anywhere nowadays he seduced me with the promise that he could get me to the bottom of the routes by car, I could even belay in the passenger seat, and the ice would be soft blue plastic dribbling from blue skies.

We enlisted another old timer who had retired from hardcore winter, Grahame Nicoll who, like me, may have seen this as a swan song trip, and Dave Mitchell a farmer from Fife whose potatoes were off to Marks & Spencer and who had nothing else to do.

Al made all the arrangements on-line, which, back then, was still a black art as far as I was concerned. He found an on-line guidebook, and the flight tickets duly arrived from Ryan Air as emails which encouraged some optimism (personally I still think a little card ticket is a more tangible confirmation). I wasn't quite so sure about the car hire firm he enlisted - Rent-A-Wreck - and as we flew off towards Oslo, we realised that actually we were going to land at somewhere called Torp, which was nowhere near Oslo! We started worrying that the hire car would be in the wrong place.

Rjukan was made famous in the film 'The Heroes of Telemark' starring Kirk Douglas which depicted the Norwegian's fight against the Nazis. It was, and still is, an industrial valley and the local resistance fought to stop the Nazis developing 'heavy water'. But the ease of access and the number of frozen waterfalls tumbling into the valley make it a great venue for softy ice climbers like me - a sort of ice grotto in a shopping mall.

The rented wreck materialised and soon I was driving at 70mph with studded tyres on snow covered roads into the dead of night (the highlight of the trip for me!). We arrived at Rjukan to be greeted by spotlights shinning onto two huge ice falls that emanated from the village itself and offered the possibility of night-time ascents - it gets dark awfully early in January up there!

The ice was indeed road side at times; I did belay in the car on Svingfoss, IV! A huge frozen fall (Kvitåa, a 9 pitch grade II) was accessed through someone's garden and went on for more like 16 pitches, followed by a never ending descent through trees and an abseil onto the road; and an excellent 'small-fall' playground at Krokan Fjellstue near the head of the valley was accessed by walking downhill for 10minutes - skidoo optional. Routes here tended to be steep, but half pitch length. Top-roping was popular and there were even a few dry-tool lines to go at.

The old power plant at Vemork above the village is now a museum to 'The Heroes' and below it, in a deep canyon are numerous 2-4 pitch lines. One is a sewerage outflow and needs to be fully frozen for obvious reasons; another is the old outflow of the hydro scheme (Nye Vemorkfoss a 3-pitch V).

The big stuff lies in the head of this canyon leading to the impressive Rjukanfossen IV - one of Norway's 'biggest' waterfalls before its flow was capped for Hydro which we were told to stay off when the klaxon sounded as they periodically sluice water down it - difficult if you're half way up it at the time. Here lies the areas most impressive test piece, Lipton, a strenuous and demanding 4 pitch grade 7, as well as other impressive '5's'.

With the temperature at minus 20 degrees Celsius when we visited, we opted for comfort. Accommodation at Rjukan's cabins was cheap (sort of) and warm. As we accessed the routes each day, we passed two Swedish climbers camped in the canyon, and they looked miserable! So draw your own conclusions.

Drinking in Norway, as everyone knows, is expensive but we did think a trip to 'the local' might help us meet some climbers. The 'in' bar was discovered after several futile searches as it was hidden underground. It was empty besides an Expat-Englishman (working at the factory that dominates the village) playing a seen-to-be-believed XXX video game which involved stripping women of their clothes! We shared a lonely two pints and a long game of pool between us until nearly midnight, when we were about to leave. Suddenly everyone under the age of thirty in the valley arrived, already drunk; the pool table disappeared and music and dancing ensued.

Although you can still get some climbing information off the internet (see http://www.mountain-environment.com/rjukanguide) there is a new Guidebook out this year that details all the climbs at Rjukan. "Heavy Water" is published by Rockfax and is written by local climbers Jon Haukåssveen and Tom Atle Bordevik and is in the classic Rockfax format with descriptions of 171 icefalls and mixed routes and plenty of colour photographs. Price is £19.95. See www.rockfax.com.

Ryan Air often offers cheap flights to Torp (see their website) and the accommodation we used was a cabin complex on the outskirts of Rjukan (see www.rjukan-hytteby.no) which comes complete with a café; although there is also a Hostel. For car hire 'Rent A Wreck' was cheap and surprisingly reliable.