Chapter 1, Departure
Monday 10 March 6.23am, our team of Alpins leaves Chambéry.
Two days and a night by train across Europe, passing through Paris, Karlsruhe, Hamburg, Copenhagen and Malmö stations, which we crossed at night in a couchette car, then Katrineholm, Oslo, Lillehammer and Otta. On paper, a short journey.
It's an adventure, a journey through the earth's time and space, a tangible experience of European geography that gives you the measure of the kilometres covered and the immensity of our continent.
The good company, the chance encounters in stations and bars, the contemplation of changing landscapes all dilute the impression of length, and time no longer has any hold on us. Propelled at 250 kilometres an hour towards Northern Europe and Scandinavia, our adventure begins on the rails of France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, all the way to the small town of Otta where we pick up two cars for the week.
Plains and hedged farmland have been replaced by pine and birch forests concealing countless lakes. Further north, the train travels along a wide frozen river. On either side of the valley are pastoral meadows dotted with large red farms, at the foot of high plateaux with gentle peaks. Born up there, the ice giants of the Quaternary period carved immense steep walls out of the gneiss and granite, bathed to the west by the long-awaited fjords.
At the end of a 38-hour journey, we set down our bags in Isfjorden, from where we can look out over the peaks of Romsdal.
Chapter 2, Envy
Take five wild animals, put them on trains for two days, then release them at the foot of snow-capped mountains on a fine day. The result is indisputable. At the first sight of a strip of snow, at the first contact of the sealskin with the cold white slopes, you'll see them pawing like huskies fed up with the harness, like horses feeling the start coming.
All caught up in our respective lives and jobs, this trip, this adventure, our holidays are our long-awaited outlet. The desire was there, strong and powerful, and we set our sights on three peaks at the bottom of the Isfjorden fjord, and set off down the slopes at a frantic pace, with an insatiable appetite for the glide, the speed and the effort. Over sixty days on skis already this winter, and yet this is the first outing I've done for myself. There's no danger, the track is safe and we have meeting points. I'm off, sometimes alone, sometimes behind Étienne or Jérémie. Lucie and Lisa follow close behind. I'm rediscovering the buried sensations. Blowing, pushing, stretching, chatting, stretching again. And on and on.
We're all aware how lucky we are to find snow and a day of good weather, after weeks of rain. There's no way we're going to let this opportunity pass us by. We made the most of our first day and made some unforgettable memories of turns against a backdrop of fjords, jagged peaks and sunsets. The aurora borealis in the evening completed the travel checklist, which was already full on the evening of the first day.
Chapter 3, Elegance
Desire, yes, but not bulimia. Not one climb too many, not one extra turn too many. We're not here to kill time, but to make the most of it. Planning an outing means finding the right balance between an ambitious day and a logical, aesthetic route. We ski tourers and mountaineers are humble artists of the summits, painting them with conversions, curves and scissors. If mountaineering is an art, then our outings must be works of art, however modest they may be, traced in the ephemeral snows. For the philosopher Hegel, a work of art is the expression of the human being, the mark he leaves on the world. The translation of a spiritual idea into matter. Through his action, his transformation of the external world, man becomes aware of himself. The elevation of the body, the elevation of the spirit. We create our mountain experiences.
The beauty of a day lies in its completeness, its variety, the pleasure taken in it and the emotions experienced. Our newly-formed group managed to achieve this subtle alchemy, day after day, by creating links and playing with the slopes, against a backdrop of constant adaptation and enlightened opportunism.
Kant would have been satisfied. By distinguishing the pleasurable from the beautiful, he asserted that there is a universal beauty, an attainable grail. Our tracks corresponded to these criteria, and this judgement was unanimous.
So Étienne climbed to a perch on a kairn at the top of Blånebba overlooking the fjords, we played tightrope walkers on the north ridge of Mjølvafjellet contemplating the 1,100 metre face of Trollevegen, we combed the fjords and drew a logical loop that made sense. It contained all the ingredients we love, unfolding over the peaks visible from our window.
Chapter 4, Crossing Skåla, between fjords, sun and storms
One of the watchwords of our stay was to use all the equipment we had brought with us and made available to us. Following a mistake by the car hire agency, we inherited not a minibus but two Toyota RAV4s, which we took great pleasure in driving on the snowiest roads.
What's more, a small peninsula in the direction of Molde was accessible by ferry, avoiding a long diversions along the coast. Looking at the map, the idea naturally sprang up to go there and walk our spatulas between two fjords, and even better, to make a beautiful crossing of the mountain range culminating at Skåla, thanks to our two vehicles.
⛴️ Like a couple of kids, we boarded the ferry at Afarnes, with the delightful impression that this maritime escapade had added the little detail that makes it all worthwhile. We put the cars down on two verges - something the Norwegians don't take kindly to - and set off on one of the most beautiful outings of our stay.
With the fjord at our backs, we put on our shoes at an altitude of 40m and climbed up through the woods, then into a sparse pine forest, in surprising weather, where heavy grey clouds laden with snowflakes rubbed shoulders with broad sunny breaks that warmed us up on the sunny slopes. This is the theme of the day: resilience in the face of weather, which continually alternates between stormy spells where we take refuge under our hoods and behind our masks, seeing no more than ten metres, and a few minutes later some fine warm weather forcing us to take off all our layers. Accepting our fate, we tucked our heads in and greedily traced the 2700m and 30 kilometres separating the two cars, feeding off the wrath of the elements and the euphoric joy of seeing the sun return.
To the north and south, we ski on the Fannefjorden and Langfjorden, between two waves of disturbance.
We ended the day at the lowest point I'd ever reached on skis, eighteen metres above sea level!
Chapter 5, Daring, opportunism and panache
Three words that could sum up our six days. The ascent of the beautiful couloir-goulotte overlooking Isfjorden is perhaps the most perfect example. A great ski mountaineering trip, in the true sense of the word!
