The Perfect Finish of The Season
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It was the perfect finish and the absolute highlight of the ice climbing season 2005, when in late February we were able to realize three first ascents in Hemsedal and Laerdal, one of them being among the hardest mixed routes in Norway, "Good push, bad bush" M10.
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Since, due to the warm temperatures, it wasn't possible to climb the 1000 metres high ice falls, we equipped ourselves with power drills and went out to the Hotten-Totten wall (the mountain next to this cliff is called Totten) to set up two worthwhile mixed lines, each 100 metres long with 2 to 3 pitches, which took us 2 days.
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Ines heading up with her Suunto Observer
Working on this extremely overhanging cliff was rather tedious. Our goal was to find the most logical lines and to link the existing ice plates, icicles and ice columns with dry tooling passages.
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We red pointed these routes and named and graded them "Good by Lenin" M9 and "Good push, bad Bush" M10.
It wasn't really our intention to put up one of the hardest routes of Norway, but in the end it filled us with a certain pride.
Meanwhile the nights had become colder and finally we set out to explore Laerdal.
We found an ice fall that seemed interesting, but we were not able to see the highest section, which only added to the suspense. After 200 metres off finest ice climbing in the sun with only one hard pitch (WI6) we reached a small plateau, where we found two sheep. One of them was badly injured, only waiting to die. Later, on our way down, we decided to help it dying.
The upper part of the route again was ice climbing at its best, another 300 hundred metres of perfect ice. Since we probably did the first ascent of this route we called it "Sheep's heaven" WI4-6.
During the remaining days we repeated Will Gadd's and Andi Spak's first ascent of a 600 metres long route called "Mörkemannen" M8 and climbed some classics like "Hydnefossen" WI5 in Hemsedal and "Haugsfossen" WI5+ near Rjukan.
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All in all Norway will stay in our minds as a place with beautiful landscapes and mystical ambience and will surely be our host again in the near future.
Thanks to the support and helpful information of Anjetta, Petter, Björn, Andi and Marcus these ascents and a perfect trip inside Norway was possible. Many thanks also to the photographer Rainer Eder, who accompanied us with his camera.
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Photos: Rainer Eder www.visualimpact.ch/photographers/eder
Text: Ines Papert www.ines-papert.de
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