IsaacDVT: 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.