Today, we got back to the Rottenvik area to climb the Rottenvikfossen we have found yesterday.
All 5 of us. As expected, no other climbers in area – so the whole thing was just for us.
Since we already knew the path, the walking was no problem, and in no time we found ourselves at the base of the climb.
There were few obvious lines to take for P1. Niall opted to go straight up on the left-hand side, taking Con and Aidan with him.
Paul chose a slightly more convoluted line to the right, towards the rock, hid for a moment behind the curtain on ice, and emerged back to the very steep final part (directly left of the rock). Definitely an interesting choice, but no problem for him – I promptly followed.
P1 belay was a massive chain wrapped around an even bigger boulder. Definitely a unique and nice surprise!
P2 was a couple of dozen meters walk forward – a much more amenable and less steep feature.
This time Con decided to take the leftmost line, and leave the middle to us. Paul, as Paul is picked the steepest part of it, just for fun I guess. I didn’t complain. I actually prefer steeper lines as a second.
The line Paul chose was very long, longer than the rope length, so we had to simul-climb for a couple of meters – not a big deal on terrain as easy as this. But it was obvious to me when he reached the belay tree and put me on belay.
The top out was straightforward – a tree where we built an abseil station.
The descent was a reverse of the ascent – down via tree abseil, walk to the chain and hike back to the car. Justs had to be careful not to abseil off the rope ends – as the P2 was longer than the ropes.
Despite warm temperatures (around +3C) it was a really pleasant day – we all got to hand out together on a nice climb. The area is absolutely stunning, providing a number of trails and walks – there is even one to the source of the waterfall – a lake directly west of our climb called… Rottenvikvatnet.
On the way back to our hut Paul and I decided to stop in the village for some small shopping and took the opportunity to walk towards the waterfront and look at the fjord and its crystal clear water again. It’s truly stunning.
Tomorrow the weather is supposed to be the same (warm and wet), really limiting our options (avalanche danger). There are still places to check out that give no avalanche risk climbing, one of them near a place called Skibotn, on the other side of the fjord – perhaps we’ll try it 2morrow.
