April has meant only one thing here at offpisteskiing.com for the last 11 years – Arctic Norway, more specifically the Lofoten Islands and adventure ski touring.
Once a forgotten backwater in the ski touring world the islands are now firmly established on the map as a ‘must-tour’ location, but still have so much terrain that you can easily go and find peace and quiet every day!
With a small but perfectly formed team lined up (some of whom were on their 10th trip to Lofoten !) all that was needed to kick things off in style was for the weather to be good and all our bags to arrive… which duly happened, so en route to our accommodation we stopped off (with a bit of digging out of the parking spot) to head for a summit that has been on my tick list for 10 years, since we turned back on it when skiing with friends back in 2013. Time got the better of us 200m below the sumit, as we still had a couple of hours driving to go, so we bailed on a fore summit shoulder and had some great powder skiing up high, followed by slightly more mixed skiing back down to the shore – not a bad start to the week!
Unlike further inland the Lofoten islands had seen high winds over the last 48 hours. On day 2 we stayed close to our accomodation, but headed out for some less-travelled variations on one of the local classic and had 2 great descents on smooth ‘wind-buff’ with not a soul in sight!
The following day the weather was decidedly ‘Lofoten-esque’, with rain/snow, high winds and low cloud. We braved the weather for a short day on a (relatively) sheltered bowl on a low peak, with 2 laps in heavy powder.
On day 3, with a mixed forecast and limited options for good snow we again decided to stay local and were rewarded with 2 good descents on creamy new snow.
For many years we had been looking at a line that just screams out to be skied, but had never found the right combination of conditions to venture up there – today we decided to go and have a look and had a stunning descent with firm ‘no-fall’ snow giving way quickly to perfect steep spring snow in a gully line hanging right above the fjord!
The next day saw us in full adventure mode again, with a technical skin up a narrow track leading to an increasingly wind-blown upper slope (despite a reasonable forecast!) – we could barely stand up on the summit and carefully changed to ski mode managing to avoid losing any kit to the wind. Once off the summit we dropped into a sheltered South facing couloir and had 500m vertical of great steep skiing down to a slightly technical exit.
For our final day with team 1 the weather completely packed in, and after 30 minutes of sitting in a car park peering up at the rain while Neil McNab and his snowboard crew did exactly the same we finally decided to bail and go for a scenic drive and a leisurely coffee and cinnamon bun fuelled tourist day. Sometimes the weather gods say no!
Many thanks to Mike, Mark, Ian, Tim & David for a great week and a positive approach to making the most of some tricky conditions – see you next year!
