rjukan, day 1

Good news! I’ve been climbing at last. Four routes to be precise…

So, Dave and I arrived in Rjukan, Norway, yesterday after an epic day of travelling (it’s a long way from Mid-Wales when you’re avoiding RyanAir…). Today was always going to have to be primarily a ‘logistics’ mission, hence this morning was spent nearly having multiple heart failures because of the sheer expense of supermarket provisions…with the exchange rate so poor, and Norway being renowned for being costly, feeding ourselves out here is proving to be a rather financially painful business. Anyway, enough of the moaning…

After our epic supermarket foray, we had a super healthy brunch of brioche and biscuits and proceeded to pack and head out to the mini-venue of Ozzimosis, just to the east of Rjukan. This place is fab when you’re used to the laborious nature of winter climbing in the UK – a 5 minute walk-in and you have several 30-35m high pure ice lines varying from simple (WI2*), to entertaining (WI3-4*), to downright scary (WI5*).

Dave started off on one of the WI3s* making it look smooth and easy, whereas my efforts in following him made it look horrendously clumsy and painful…my calfs were burning like crazy and I was swinging my axes like a rabid chimpanzee, although mercifully I did settle in to things somewhat when I led the adjacent WI3.

Dave enjoying himself

Of course, anyone that knows me will know that I’m slightly wonky in the brain department, and today I displayed this endearing trait by deciding that I was in fact going to lead a WI5 as my second ice route of the year…now I should point out that I have in fact not ever led WI5 before (knowingly) and spent most of my trip last year chickening out of doing so, hence when I wandered over to the base of this thing and started gearing up, Dave looked a touch ‘surprised’ shall we say…

They do say the colour of Adrenaline is brown: me on something steep and scary

Of course, photographs never make ice routes look anywhere near as steep as they actually are, and obviously they always feel steeper than they really are too when you’re a mere mortal…

I may have had a couple of ‘moments’ during my epic lead, you know, those ‘moments’ where you think you’re losing it, get scared, lose it a little more, think you’re going to fall off and then…

…decide that you’re not going to fall off because falling on ice is likely to hurt (bad thing), and actually, if you just gather yourself together you can force yourself to breathe and remember that actually, you are more than capable of climbing this stuff.

I did it. Dave followed me up. We abseiled off. I’m an awesome story-teller…

So, there we were, my whole body slowly dissipating adrenaline, my calfs solid with cramp (front pointing is hard going), my forearms leaden, and Dave decides to do one last route before it got dark – something verging on WI3-4 so not exactly trivial. I was utterly delighted (obviously)…especially when the hot aches robbed me of my dignity as I topped out. Serves me right for being too lazy to dig out my dry gloves I suppose.

Dave choosing an ‘awkward bastard’ of a line to finish

Today was brilliant, I love Rjukan, I love ice climbing. Let’s hope the rest of the trip is as good as today.

*Please take my gradings with a pinch of salt, the difficulty of ice routes is highly variable and so not all of the grades I’m going to give are the same as are written in the guidebook. The grades I will quote all this week and the grades myself and Dave felt the routes warranted in the condition in which we found them.