Ristinden and its shoulder

And unfortunately that is going to be how it remains until I’m next in Lofoten this time next year. For some reason I didn’t feel quite right about this one beforehand, some of it being irrational and due to the fact that I was going to solo this and some of it perhaps not.

The snow was again on the sparse side on the start of the climb up and again I didn’t use skins.

The intended climb up in red and the same ski down

There was a lot of water coming down the mountain in the form of streams and there were a few marked on the map for this mountain, so I didn’t think it was anything out of the ordinary other than, yes, the snow was melting. There was a fair bit of sluff and pin wheel activity too.

I took this one late in the day (16.30), reasoning that the south facing climb and ski would be softer and in the process of refreezing by the time I got to it. Which it was but the face was in a lot worse shape than I thought.

This face starts out mellow and gets progressively steeper. It’s 40 degrees (measured with inclinometer) half way up the face and still had a fair amount of steepness to go maxing out where you enter the south face from the shoulder (I’m guessing that must be 50 degrees). I didn’t get any further than half-way up the face. At that point, I was confronted with some big fissures in the snow pack, just waiting for more heat (or weight) to set them off.

Nasty cracks in the snow pack

More big, nasty cracks in the snowpack

Not a nice feeling……. That was my cue to bin the route and head back down. So this will be another mountain for another day. This route has had its day for this season.

Temperatures are unseasonably warm for this time of year, not only in Lofoten but all over Norway, so take extra special care and enjoy the remainder of your season.

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This little mountain is right on the doorstep to Leknes and you can see it from the parking lot of the shopping centre. It’s pretty much West-North-West facing. The couloir on Bulitinden originally caught my eye and I tried to get up there with Angelita the previous day but we chose an inefficient route with lots of bushwhacking through thick trees. When we got to the face, it hadn’t quite thawed AND I started climing the wrong couloir!

So back to the drawing board….. and up Guratinden first instead. Way better route and it starts close to the road to Sennesvik and you can come back out to the same place to pick the car up too. Sweet!

Bulitinden & Guratinden from left to right

I took this one solo and bootpacked up the couloir due to the spring corn but you can probably skin up with better snow earlier in the year. Once you’re out, you’ve gained around 400m, so most of the climb is already done. Then it’s just a traverse over to Bulitinden. I didn’t get the skins out once for this trip. Guratinden was a bit patchy on the snow front to be honest. Although, I have to say, if this mountain had more snow on it and it was earlier in the season, I would have felt very exposed on the top and probably not made a bee-line for it’s summit. Moss bed surface and a big open expanse of convex snow.

Backside of Guratinden. Nice run down to Sennesvik...?

Look down to Sennesvik between Gura- and Bulitinden

It’s straight-forward to get across to Bulitinden from Guratinden. Finding the couloir entrance on Bulitinden, on the other hand, wasn’t. There are three possible entrances (only two of which went) and there is a big roll-over and the mountain just falls away. I knew the couloir went from the summit but you always have your doubts and I didn’t fancy getting cliffed-out. Luckily, I had the option of calling a friend, in this case, Angelita! Unfortunately for me, she couldn’t see me through the binoculars, so I took the plunge and got it right (take the entrance from the summit). The couloir was steeper than I thought, around 45 degrees and around 250m long, west facing and nice and soft snow in the evening sun.

Looking back up the couloir on Bulitinden

Views from Bulitind looking west

Views from Bulitind looking west

There’s not a lot of skiing to be had on this to be honest but the weather was great and it was just great to be out. Once you come out of the couloir, you want to try and stay in the most immediate little valley and ski down as far as you can (no real obvious way to describe it). There was a fair amount of bushwhaking the way I went but I followed one of the streams and came out at a wide path which took me all the way back to where the car was parked. No fuss at all.

The whole tour took 2.5hrs (incl. 30mins break) and was around 650m vertical gain. With more snow, you could probably speed up the exit some too.

Nice tour and it you don’t like the couloir on Bulitinden, you can just ski down from the col.

Want to see more splitboarding in Norway…..? Click here.