Sump To Summit

We found a crag called Alset Ice Crag, only a 20-minute drive from the cabin. Because it’s a bit further from Rjukan, it was pretty quiet — not many people make the trip out there.

As we left the car, we bumped into Cece and Daryl, who we’d chatted to briefly at Krokan the day before. El and I went looking for the 30-metre abseil into the gorge, but couldn’t find it — and the river ice looked a bit too thin to risk crossing.

Then we spotted a massive, wide icefall further upstream, and figured we could probably find a way across to that. We wandered through the trees, following a few old footprints, and eventually linked up with the track ‘the other punters’ had taken (as El called them).

We climbed down to the river, re-met C&D, and descended the icefall together. The main Alset Ice Crag was beautifully formed — and in the sun! It felt like we had the place to ourselves, tucked away in this magical little gorge.

We each picked out lines that looked good and set about climbing. I went for a WI4 route that looked incredible. The slab at the start was fun, and then I reached the vertical section — but had to ditch a layer first. Climbing in the sun, I was really feeling the heat!

The vertical pitch was a beauty. It demanded a lot from my arms and progress was slow, but I made it up and felt well chuffed with myself. I got lowered off, and El gave it a go on top rope — and smashed it.

We left our rope up for Cece and Daryl to climb the line, and I jumped on one of their ropes further down the crag to try leading another section. My last words to them were, “Looks to be a doddle.”

Of course, it wasn’t.

That section had been baking in the sun all day, so the top layer of ice was soft and slushy. I had to hack a lot away just to find something solid enough to trust. It was a bit steeper, and I was struggling to place screws — partly because of the ice quality, partly because my arms were already knackered from the earlier climb.

I made my way up slowly, getting the occasional shower of snow and ice from above. I thought I’d topped the crux, but the ice higher up was even more melted. I decided to head for a tree to make a belay… only to discover the ‘tree’ was just a severed limb, hanging there unattached.

I looked up and saw a solid clump of trees right on the top of the crag, and realised I didn’t have much choice but to keep climbing — even though the ice was sketchy as hell. It felt very Scottish. Tufts of grass, dry tooling up a bit of rock, terrible rope drag the whole way — but I made it.

El seconded up to meet me, and just as she topped out, I lowered her back down. I sorted the ropes and abbed off myself. A quick tidy-up at the bottom and we headed back to the cars.

Another awesome day of climbing — and great to hang out with such nice, cheery people!