Imagine a group of islands, far away, where steep
spectacular mountains rise directly from the sea, where in the winter
everything is covered with a pristine blanket of snow, from the summits right
down to the wild, white sand beaches.
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| 360 degree views like this everywhere |
Small pretty fishing villages dotted
around the islands, houses built perched on the water’s edge, with cod hanging
to dry on traditional wooden racks as though you have stepped back in time,
with a friendly, slow pace of life to match.
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| Cod drying on traditional racks |
Where on a clear night, there are
perfect views of the most incredible light show on earth. A place that time
forgot, and where it’s easy to forget time, and just live simply. Sleep when it’s
dark, eat when you’re hungry, forget about phones, computers, TV, and other
gadgets and ‘necessities’ of the modern world that we sometimes feel we can’t
live without.
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| Old farming relics |
As well as all this, imagine if this group of islands were
one huge playground for outdoor sports. With perfect conditions for ski
mountaineering…easily accessible peaks where it’s possible to ski up from the
beach to a summit, take in the most incredible 360 degree views of the
mountains, islands, and ocean around, then pick any kind of descent, from wide
mellow bowls, to steep, narrow couloirs, all with perfect powder, and finish
down by the sea again. I must be dreaming right?
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| The magnificent view from Geitgaljen |
Think again…this place exists and I’ve just been there J!
I should probably be keeping this a secret, as it’s the kind
of place you don’t ever want to change and develop as more people discover it.
But a) I’m not that selfish, and b) the effort required to get there and the
adventurous nature of taking part in the activities on offer there will mean
it’s not going to become a mainstream destination any time soon.
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| View from our lodge |
The Lofoten islands lie north of the Arctic Circle, off the far
north west coast of Norway, and are one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever
been lucky enough to visit.
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| Hilda, me, and Leanne |
My companions on the trip were Leanne (by day an
anaesthetist, by night a gnarly climber, mountaineer and skier, with bags of experience
from first ascents and expeditions to remote places like Greenland, and
Patagonia….very cool!) and Hilda (by day a GP and mother of two, by night a
superfit ultrarunner, cyclist, and skier, who told me she once rode up and down
the Alpe d’Huez climb 6 times in a row….for fun….my kind of girls!), who had
planned the whole trip between them, leaving me just to turn up with my kit at
the airport ready for 2 weeks of fun and adventure!
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| Celebrating another awesome view |
I should add that I only met Hilda whilst skiing in La Grave
at New Year, and Leanne whilst in Chamonix in January, and having only spent a
grand total of about 2 days with each of them, I felt very honoured that they
were willing to invite me on their annual ski touring trip! I can’t speak for
them, but I had a brilliant time, and I hope there’ll be more adventures
together in the future!
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| Lofoten Ski Lodge |
We stayed at the Lofoten Ski lodge, which was absolutely
fantastic. Comfortable cosy wooden cabins, with a huge communal building where
we ate delicious meals each day, and cosy sheepskin rug-covered chairs by a
roaring fire to curl up in after a long day out on the hills. The Norwegians
certainly know how to do hospitality.
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| Menu board! |
Getting to the Islands is not the easiest task from the UK,
and involved several flights, a midnight ferry, and a long car drive at a
ridiculous time in the morning, but after a short sleep in the (very full of
kit) car, we arrived in time for breakfast of homemade bread, smoked salmon and
eggs, cereals, fruit, porridge, and most importantly strong coffee, and were able
to get straight out skiing for the day!
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| Still as glass |
The skiing experience in Lofoten is pretty magical. There
can’t be many places in the world where you put your skis on at sea level,
climb to a summit, and descend back to finish at the sea!
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| Adventure every day! |
Every day was
different but equally brilliant, with some great skiing in soft, hero powder,
and some classic summits and descents ticked.
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| Shredding fresh pow on the way down from Torskmannen (The Cod man!) |
We were definitely in the
minority as an unguided group (especially of all girls!), but with a pretty
comprehensive background of experience in the mountains in winter between us,
we made a strong team, and the route planning, weather watching and decision
making needed were all part of the adventure for us.
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| Descending icy summits |
Several of the summits
needed a boot up in crampons and with an axe, which added nicely to the
experience, and the views from the tops are something which even thinking about
them now still take my breath away.
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| Just your average Lofoten summit view |
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| Taking in yet another spectacular vista |
Maybe it’s the position of the sun in the sky there, or
maybe it’s just the beautiful landscape and scenery around you, but the light
in Lofoten is amazing.
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| Another day of stunning light |
Everywhere you look you could take a snapshot image and
it would be like a postcard view….sunlight breaking through clouds and hitting
a snow arête, making the snow sparkle and glimmer in front of you. Even when
the weather turns bad, and it can do….quickly!, the views are awe-inspiring and
totally captivating.
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| And another one... |
Yes, the weather is pretty unpredictable! It seems unusual
to get a solid block of very settled weather, so you need to make plans quickly
and go when it looks like you have chance! We had a few days of beautiful
clear, sunny skies, but also some days where the weather was somewhat more
‘Scottish’, with zero visibility and horizontal sleet one minute, and brief
weather windows of sun the next!
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| Getting ready to drop-in for the descent during a sunny weather window |
During the second half of the trip, we organised a boat trip
into the Trollfjord, Norway’s deepest and most famous fjord. Incredibly remote,
with no road access, inhabitants, or phone signal, it’s a place where you are
very much on your own, from when the boatman drops you off until you are picked
up.
I’d thoroughly recommend Lofoten as a ski-mountaineering
destination, but it’s not for everyone, and definitely not a place to go for
your first trip, unless you hire a guide. There are none of the lifts to help
you gain height that you find in places like Chamonix, far fewer people to help
if anything goes wrong, less predictable weather than the Alps, and little
chance of being able to call for a chopper rescue as it takes several hours to
get there from its base on the mainland. It’s wild and remote terrain where you
are much more on your own, but if you’re prepared for that, it all adds to give
the place a sense of adventure that it’s hard to find in the busier places in
the Alps.
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| Wild, remote, spectacular |
One of the things I’d been most excited about for the trip,
as well as all the great skiing, was the possibility of seeing the Aurora
Borealis, or Northern Lights. I’d never seen them before, and it’d been on my
wishlist of things to see and do for a long time. Being so far north, lying
under the Auroral belt, and having so little light pollution, northern Norway
is one of the best places in the world to witness the Aurora, and I was desperately
hoping we would. As the trip went on however, and even after sunny days, the
sky became overcast each night, it seemed like it was just going to have to
wait for another trip.
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| The Hurtigruten....slightly more upmarket than your average Dover-Calais ferry! |
But on our last night, aboard the overnight Hurtigruten
ferry back to Bodo, I got lucky J
From midnight until 2 am, I sat out on a deck chair underneath a perfectly
clear sky, watching shooting stars, and the most amazing natural phenomenon
I’ve ever seen (as well as getting mildly hypothermic!)
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| A bit blurry but they are not very easy to photograph on a moving boat! |
The whole sky was alive with light. A
constantly changing curtain, rippling in waves across the sky, then more vivid
shafts of light, almost unreal, as though they were being generated by a huge
spotlight. It was so silent and unbelievably magical. It made me really
emotional to think how lucky I was to be witnessing something so special, and I
spent a long time sitting on my own with silent tears running down my face. I
thought of Gareth and how much he would have loved to see them there with me,
and of how he would have loved the adventure of the whole trip.
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| A beautiful final sunset from our last night in Norway |
Ever since losing Gareth, I feel like I am so much more
grateful and appreciative of the opportunities I have and the things I see and
places I go. I take much less for granted, realising that life can change so
suddenly and all these wonderful things can be gone in a second. Gareth loved
life and was full of energy and joy for life, and it would feel like a
dishonour to not be incredibly grateful for the opportunity to see things like
this, when he no longer can. Although it hasn’t always felt like it this winter
as I’ve moved from one place to another, my pace of life is so much slower than
it used to be, and that means I’m lucky to be able to spend time taking in
everything around me…the sights, the sounds, the feel of places, to experience
everything more fully. Whatever I do and
wherever I go in the future, I hope I don’t lose that, and can always remember
not to take anything for granted.
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| Yes it's uphill and yes, I am smiling! It's hard not too when you're in such a stunning place |
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| Feeling very fortunate to be doing the things I have this winter |
So as you can probably tell if you’ve read through to here,
I thought Lofoten was an incredible place and I’d love to go back! There are
loads of lines to ski that I spied for future trips, the climbing on the huge
granite cliffs rising from the sea looks amazing, and don’t even get me started
on how much potential this place has for some out-of-this-world mountain
biking!!
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| Hilda and me jumping to stay warm on one of Lofoten's wild beaches |
