Luca, a friend from Chamonix, has come up for a few days to check out Norway and Lofoten for the first time. The weather has been more than a bit frustrating since his arrival and everything we have tried to do has ended up in complete white-out at the summit in strong winds and snow, hoping for a weather window.

We went up Stornappstind yesterday to ski the South Couloir. I skied this last year for the first time solo (here are more details on how to get there and specifics on the couloir.)

The weather had been shifting all day and it looked like nothing was going to happen. Hoping things had settled down a bit and would  improve, we went for it. Of course that never happened and we ended up waiting on the summit in a complete white out with strong winds and snow for about 1.5 hrs unsure if we had found the entrance to the couloir. Finally a window of sorts presented itself and we could see the entrance (indeed where we thought it was) and dropped in.

And well worth the wait it was too! The conditions in the couloir were fantastic. Really cohesive snow and things seemed to be really well bonded. You could ski it pretty fast.

Luca finally managed to get his first line. Let’s hope for a few more in the coming days.

The couloir is protected from the current wind so there is no windslab. But as a result, it does have wind transported snow in there. I couldn’t see any signs of instability but it is something to bear in mind.

For more trips reports in Lofoten and for more trip reports in Norway.

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It’s really easy to get to too which also makes it a pretty popular tour although there were only about four other guys on the mountain today. From Oslo, you just have to head towards Rjukan (a town with its own story to tell) and a few km before you get there, you turn off left and follow the road which takes you to the Gaustatoppen ski resort. As you start to get to the top, the road forks. Keep going straight on (not left) and after a few hundred metres you arrive at a gate blocking the road. The skin starts here and follows the road up a way until a few outhouses where you can pick you line to skin up.

Gaustatoppen (1883m). Taken from the road before gaining altitude.

From the car, the vertical gain is around 950m and I was on the top in around 2 hrs. I had thought about lapping this one more time but that thought was put paid to halfway up and  confirmed on the way down. The snow was bullet!

I started slipping pretty badly on a few sections on the way up and had to bootpack up for a few hundred metres before putting the boards back on. The way down was not much better to be honest.

I thought I would try out the first obvious couloir from the big tower (you can just about see it on the picture). There is a bit of a convex role at the entrance and these always make me a bit nervous for avalanche no matter how stable things are, especially being solo. Absolutely nothing to worry about. It was bullet!  Maybe I should rephrase that. Not quiet bullet. You could make an impression in it if you punched it but my board didn’t leave very obvious tracks. It’s a pretty steep entrance. I’m guessing around 45 degrees but it soon mellows out to around 40 degrees and then keeps mellowing from there.

At least the surface of the snow in the couloir was smooth. I couldn’t say the same once I was out of the couloir. Sastrugi everywhere and this time it was bullet and icy with a couple of mm of powder. Not nice at all. Survival snowboarding really. I didn’t open it up until a joined the skin track on the way down and you cannot really open it up there anymore anyway as it so mellow.

I’m guessing the rain from Christmas time is still a major factor here. This mountain is quite exposed and any new snow is probably just being blown away at the moment. I should really have just boarded down the way I skinned up to be honest.

So….. not great snowboarding but a good day out in the pursuit of fitness.

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

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