Sunnmore is famous for it's coastal mountain chains, providing exceptional climbing a skiing. The week we chose to visit however had a very challenging forecast with warm low pressure systems bringing persistent precipitation,wind and poor visibility-lovely!
After sleeping in the van at the ferry dock to Volda, Sofia told me stories of her summer climbing trips to the area of glorious long sunny days and atmospheric ridge scrambles and rock climbing routes.
This however was going to be contrasting few days climbing and skiing, with considerable avalanche prone forecast.
The first day we took the heavy climbing gear on a long walk. We turned around before even seeing the intended route by the avalanche conditions. It wasn't the first time and certainly wouldn't be the last :)
The next day we got more calculated in our mission choice, Figgeren is an classic easy climb of the area with thankfully low angled approach sloes- we decided our best bet given the persistent heavy snow fall and fluctuating temperatures.
The approach to Fingeren 1108m.
After the long approach though heavy snow we eat a little lunch just below the windy ridge. The weather continued to deteriorate. Although she didn't admit to it I recognised Sofia was surprised when I put my harness and crampons on. "so... we are going to climb then?"
It was at this point I realised that there's something to be said for honing your winter climbing in Scotland; Im quite conformable in windy conditions and in the poor visibility I could have been easily convinced that we were climbing on the Ben again.
The underfoot climbing conditions were actually quite good.
good rime on the rocks.
By this point time was not on our-side however and we took an abseil point back down to the call.
The ski down was quite challenging in the conditions,with little sluffs coming down from the couloirs above us we had to ensure we were choosing safe terrain down at all times.
I Love DNT cabins.Warm and comfortable after along day in the elements.
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