A journey across 22 HØURS and 3 different dream lines.
After a slightly frustrating and dry season in the Alps, we were about to put our skis in the cellar. That’s exactly when we got a call from our friend and Norwegian snowboard legend, Krister Kopala, telling us that there is a huge storm approaching Trømso.
We quickly decided to go for one last mission before summer and made our way up north. Arriving in Trømso, it was the deepest winter, snow all the way to the fjords and 24h of sunlight. Finally winter is here.
We started chasing short weather windows, starting tours at 11pm and dropping in at 3am. Most of the time we spent hiking up some narrow couloirs in heavy snowfall, hoping for a weather window to appear somewhere on the horizon.
We finally saw a window coming up in the forecast. We were 100% committed. We started our approach towards the goal, the north face of Store Jægervastinden. After about 20 km and 1400m we reached a saddle, a few hundred meters below the summit ridge. -15°C, strong wind and complete whiteout, exactly where we wanted to be. We dug a snow cave and the waiting game started but the weather window just didn’t appear.
We decided to push towards the summit, hoping that the weather would clear up every second, as we wanted to ski the north face, which only has “sun” between midnight and 3am. Half an hour later we were on the summit, still cloudy and windy but with a few meters of visibility. Just before midnight we saw a glimpse of light and a minute later the whole sky cleared up and the sun was hitting us from the horizon. The feeling was incredible and our surroundings were OUT OF THIS WORLD!
From sunset at midnight to sunrise at 1am we climbed the sharp summit ridge to the main summit and rappelled into the north face to check the snowpack for weak layers. It was stable!
Ready? 3 – 2 – 1 – Drop in!
