Summer of silence

At the moment of writing i´m sitting on the train from Abisko towards Stockholm. In Abisko i´ve attended an ice climbing course. It was my first visit to mountains since July. Everything with very mixed feelings.

About 5 months ago on a sunny warm day in Chamonix, the summer turned silent. A strange noise behind me after that the fall.

That day I lost my father.

I don´t know what to say or write. A hike on a calm day in the ´´aiguilles rouge mountains´´ on the famous ´´tour the Mont blanc´´ turned out into a loss that hard to describe. I did what I could but nothing helped. Since that day time lost its momentum . It´s indescribable how much I miss him.

I have tried to find answers, what happened, what went wrong? The thing is, I cannot find any. Is this called an accident? where something comes out of nowhere and you cannot do any about it? I guess so.

A magic moment.
Coming from two different directions we happened to meet exactly on the summit of Kebnekaise

Back on the horse:

After the accident time has stand still but slowly it is ticking and gaining momentum again. To go to the ice climbing course and stick to the plan to continue the mountainguide training for the moment is important for me, I have to try and would like to be able to get the love back for the moutains, we will see. 
I guess for many that read this piece of text it is just what is says, a text. For me it´s more than that. Writing this text on my blog means to take another step of the so many steps to give this event a place, but also to be able to open up the possibility to write on the blog again and be able to share my trips and adventures and continue to work on my profile as a becoming moutainguide. If it works, I don´t know? But I have to try, time will tell.

Lofoten Rocks!

The rock course was held end of May in Lofoten in the far north of Norway, also called the magic islands.The Lofoten island offer some world class climbing on perfect granite, natuarally protected with no bolts in sight.

It was pretty stressfull before the course week. Several exams on the university had to be done, fulltime work with rope acces and an exam to become a rock climbing instructor. Luckily everything went well and passing all exams i could fly to the north as an fully qualified rock instructor according to the Swedish UIAA rules.

The course consisted of 5 days and in those days the main aim was to learn and understand a good way to guide clients on multipitch rock routes. With good instructors and a great weather forecast we had a good week to expect. The first day we started of with a test of basic rescue scenario´s and discussed different ways of building anchors to learn new tricks and just to be sure that everyone has the same idea about a good anchor. The rest of the days we planned and climbed multipitch routes often in teams of three. It seems that it´s not so hard to climb and guide a party. I guess that everyone who has climbed multipitch routes knows the setting, the rope is a mess, the traverse badly protected because you found it easy and the belay in an uncomfortable place just because you tried to run out the pitch to the max, but you don´t really care because you just cleared the crux and your partner solves the mess for you. In guiding this is a big no go. When you climb with clients it´s al about planning and being several steps ahead. This not only to make it nice for your client but in the end also to make it safer and nicer for yourself. During the days we trained in how to manage the rope, putting in protection for yourself but also for your clients, making the rope run smoother and route finding. Al in al guiding is much more than being able to climb and put up a rope, there´s more to is and that´s trickier then you would think. In the 5 days we actually had one day were some rain was expected so we used that to learn the first steps in a guides technique called short roping. This technique is used in easier but exposed terrain, the rope and a lot of coaching is used to keep the whole party save. As you can guess this is a skill and a craft that is extremely important to learn and the introduction day we had was only a glimps of what to come on the rest of the courses. 

Henningsvear and it´s klatrekafeen as a base for the week.

Rescue scenario with a view

waiting for perfection

is this gonna work good for the client?

Tatu a short roping master?

Råna, an adventurous and amazing climb, 5c/6a in big boots

Lofoten scenery

Plesure climbing after the course, Frederik cruising

Cruising Presten, Vestpilaren

Lofoten, where the sun always shines !? (10 p.m.)

Skimo

Spending this winter season mostly in Stockholm every chance is taken to get away to the mountains and of course you want to be as effective as possible, so then Skimo or ski mountaineering is a perfect combination. Skimo is a sport where you climb up and ski down a mountains as fast as possible and at the same time negotiate the terrain encountered. Unfortunately there are no real mountains in Stockholm, but luckily there are a couple of ski hills where you can get some vertical meters.

On one of those hills a competition was arranged called ´´Hammarby 2h´´ (www.vertex.cx/2h/). A race were you have to go up and down as many times within 2 hours, considering that the there´s only about 90 vertical meters gained every lap it means a lot of transitions from climbing to downhill mode. Of course I couldn’t resist to participate. It turned out to be a nice race. I managed to go up and down 19 times, far less than the winner Patrik Nordin with 24 laps, but still ending up at a 7^th place. After the race I ran in to a guy called Magnus Jensen it turned out that we both had been thinking of participating in a race called ´´Keb-classic´´ the ultimate race for ski mountaineers in Sweden at the moment. Unfortunately none of us had a partner so plans started to grow to team up. Before making the decision we wanted to participate in the race ´´King of six pack´´ in the mountains of Jämtland to see how we worked as a team.

Warm up run on getryggen

Technique training and filming 

We found out that the days before and after the the sixpack race there was a Skimo training camp organized by no one less than Emelie Forsberg, one of  the best skyrunner and ski mountaineer in the world. We got the chance to participate and couldn´t say no to that.

We had four days of training including the day of the race. We stayed in the mountain hut ´´Storulvån´´ runned by the Swedish tourist association (STF). The first day was a day of easy uphill skiing getting the legs started. The second day, the day before the race we worked on skinning technique, taking in and of skins, putting skis on backpack etc. In the evening we packed our gear and got ready for the race the day after, of course we first enjoyed a nice 3 course dinner.

During the race

The day of the race it was Magnus, Gustav and me participating as a team together with 21 other teams. Because of the race being an easy going nothing official race, we were allowed to decide our own start time and our own route. It was a great day with fantastic weather. We managed to climb the 6 summits that were included in the six pack in 3 hours and 15 minutes at around 2000 vertical meters which gave us a 6^th place, and most important made it back to the lunch in the mountain hut.

´´Snodden´´ the team 

The last day we did some interval training before hitting the road all the way back to Stockholm. The weekend was a success so me and Magnus booked Keb-classic as soon as we could.

We raced in Keb-classic last weekend I´ll put a report of that as soon as possible until then have a look on www.kebclassic.se.

Alp visit

At this time of writing I am in Stockholm working. About 3 months ago I left Stockholm and drove south to the Alps for some skiing, climbing and the first course for the mountain guide course. Unfortunately this winter hasn´t reached any records yet when it comes to snowfall. Green Christmas celebrations had been reported from all over the Alps. With a quick stop in Chamonix to collect some gear I went to pick up Gustav Mellgren at the airport in Geneva. We had both done some research on for that moment the best ski locations. Andermatt was high up on the list, when Gustav on top of that by coincidence met his friend Klas Englund at the airport with the same destination in mind, the choice was made.  

Being the days just before new year´s finding accommodation was not the easiest, luckily at the famous ´´Swedish house´´ a.k.a. ´´Villa villakulla´´ (a group of seasoneers that rent a house and nowadays work and live fulltime in Andermatt) they were kind enough to let us stay for some nights, even though it already was very busy.

In Andermatt we actually found fairly good conditions. We varied lift skiing with some easier touring. Al the time we had to be quite cautious because of the tricky avalanche situation that is the main theme in the Alps this season…
The main discovery of this trip was the Gotthard tunnel to the Swiss kanton Tiscino. On the bad weather days this was the quick escape. With a ride of just under one hour from Andermatt you enter a complete different world; sunshine, warm temperatures, palm trees and one of the best bouldering i´ve ever done.

Klas Englund cruising in Andermatt

picking lines in Andermatt

Cogne with warm temps

After the trip to Andermatt I went to Cham for a couple of weeks trying to make something of the conditions. I filled the days with some skiing, working out, drytooling and some easier alpine climbing. Something that´s almost a must do is to start a ski or climb from the aiguille du midi-lift but for the first time on I don´t know how many trips to Cham I never made my way up there…strange idea.

Short visit to Verbier

Gustav Mellgren climbing rock instead of ice...

Sunshine skiing with my dad :)

Before it was time to go back Sweden, I went to Davos. Even I you would think that, I didn´t go there for the WEF. In Davos the ´´Schnee und lawinenforschung´´SLF is based. This is one of the world leading institutes on avalanche science (www.slf.ch). The Swedish mountain guide organization (SBO) had planned a week long avalanche course for us as part of the guide training.
The course started with a refresher of our skills and a visit to the ski patrol. Two full days where spent with Manuel Genswein, a real guru, and probably the mind behind your transceiver. By his lead we trained a lot on transceiver search methods and how to solve tricky multiple burials. If we got cold that was easily solved by practicing digging, jup even that you can optimize by digging in a V-shape or so called conveyor belt.
The other days we had some shorter lectures about snow physics and national avalanche forecasting but mainly we were out in the field together with Stephan Harvey, a mountain guide working for the SLF. We dug snow pits to examine the snowpack, trained on route finding in avalanche terrain and much more. It was very interesting given that there was a lot of avalanche activity. We even managed to trigger some small avalanches from a distance, a clear sign of instability.

Conveyor belt or V-shape digging

Stephan Harvey measuring density

Mikael Almlert checking out the avalanche we triggerd remotly 

Can you see the weak layer?