Peak to peak in Molladalen


They say that what goes up must come down. That doesn’t apply to Molladalen, in Norway’s Sunnmøre district. There, you stay up. Long after you’ve left.

FOR SUNNMØRE, it’s a fairly average Saturday in July. Dark clouds hang threateningly over the sea, an angry gull shrieks and sluggish waves break against a jetty. The ferry dock in Solevåg stands empty and forlorn; old hotdog wrappers skip along the ground. Looks like rain. Looks like a glum summer day. But what’s that on the road? Who’s driving those two cars? Why are they smiling like that? And what’s inside those big rucksacks?

IMAGINE IT’S 1889. Imagine the British climbers William Cecil Slingsby and Geoffrey Hastings hiking through Jotunheimen and across the Jostedal Glacier. Imagine their joy at being the first to reach mountain summits, using routes of their own devising. Imagine them continuing north, to the Sunnmøre Alps, where they are the first to ascend Store Brekketind. After that feat Slingsby must return home – summoned by love, perhaps, or by the press of business. In any case, imagine Geoffrey Hastings left alone in Sunnmøre, dressed in his jacket and tie with hat, knickers and spiked shoes. He carries an ice axe more than a meter long. Hastings checks into Ørstenviks Hotel in Orsta on Sep. 5, 1889. The next morning he is up at dawn, leaving the hotel at 6:30 a.m. and hiking all the way through Romedalen, then further, further, at high tempo, until he enters a valley unlike any other. In all likelihood, he is Molladalen’s first tourist. The peaks within his field of view – sharp prows rising to the sky – are so numerous.

TELEPHONE CONVERSATION with Solveig Bjellmo, a young doctor at Ålesund Hospital, 119 years later: “Hi, this is Eivind from Norrøna Magazine. I wonder if you’d like to go climbing in Molladalen.” “In Molladalen? Of course I’ll go to Molladalen! What a question! I’d go to Molladalen anytime! What’s to wonder about? When do we leave? We have to have Camilla with us. And Øyvind. They’re doctors, too. Yes, yes, yes. You’ll be in the safest hands. With three doctors along, what danger could there be? Ha ha. It’ll be great! Molladalen! We’re going to Molladalen! Yes!” And so here we are, at the Solevåg ferry dock, our packs full of climbing harnesses, climbing shoes, pitons, cams, carabiners, helmets and raisins. The weather report is not great, but our enthusiasm is. And there, across the fjord, waiting for us, are the climbing legend Helge Standal and his daughter. Helge has written a climbing guide to Molladalen as well as skiing and hiking guides to the Sunnmøre Alps. No one knows the area better than he. And his daughter – what is her story? “I’m studying medicine,” she says. So – four medics in the group. Bring on the mountains.

AFTER GEOFFREY HASTINGS, there were lots of non-acrophobes who found their way to Molladalen: C. W. Patchell, Kristofer Randers, Helge Hagen, Dagfinn Hovden, Arne Randers Heen, Tore Lundgren and the legendary Hans Christian Doseth, who went climbing in Molladalen shortly before he was killed descending from Pakistan’s Great Tango Tower in 1984. All the peaks and pinnacles around Molladalen are conquered. The most beautiful routes have been identified and hiked. Rumour has spread. To Oslo, to Stockholm, to Innsbruck. And now it’s our turn. We stand at the bottom of the valley and gaze up the vertical mountain walls. There is Jønshorn. There are Randers’s Top, Mohn’s Top and Slingsby’s Top. And there are Kruttårnet, Holtanna and Molladalstårnet. All of them are served as if on a silver platter, no ticket required, no bill due. We go mute from awe. That is, until a violent clap of thunder scares the life out of us. The clouds are darker than ever. And now it begins to rain. It rains like it’s never rained before. “It’ll pass,” says Solveig. “It won’t last,” says Camilla. “A little rain never hurt,” says Øyvind. What is it with doctors these days? Where do they get such limitless optimism?

WE HAVE THREE GOALS FOR THE DAY: 1. Climb the H-3 needle 2. Climb Bladet (“The Blade”) 3. Climb Mohn’s Top Easy climbing. A fun challenge. An airy adventure. But as long as the rain keeps up, our goals seem utopian. We trudge upward, each of us isolated in our Gore-Tex hoods, alone with our frustrations. Why such weather, on this day in particular? Why should we be so unlucky? Should we turn back? Go home and watch football on television? “Here comes the good weather,” says Helge Standal. “Where?” “Over there,” he replies, pointing into an ocean of cloud. Helge has spent more days and nights in Molladalen than anyone else. At times he has practically lived here. The guru has spoken, in a sing-song Volda dialect. And of course he’s right. The rain stops. The sky brightens. It’s time to put on our climbing harnesses and helmets. It’s time to embrace the rock.

THE H-3 NEEDLE thrusts skyward near Mohnsrenna, deep inside Molladalen. First surmounted in 1956, it offers half a rope’s length of simple climbing. But you mustn’t go limp lifting yourself onto the tip of the needle. You mustn’t get dizzy. You mustn’t contemplate a loss of balance. From here, it’s straight down on all sides. I abandon my macho plan of peeing out into space from the summit. It just doesn’t seem like the place to fiddle with a zipper.

AFTER DESCENDING from the H-3 needle we proceed up the steep side of Mohnsrenna. The stones are loose, and the trail is obscure and slippery. Paradoxically enough, we feel less safe here than we did rappelling down the needle. We resolve to walk carefully and keep a close eye on one another. Safely up, we immediately take in the sight of Bladet: a razor-like knife’s edge, an impossible formation, the logo image of Molladalen itself. “Are we going up onto that?” wonders Camilla. “Yep,” says Helge. “I’m as eager as a child,” says Camilla. From the west it doesn’t look possible to climb Bladet. But as you make your way to the other side, you begin to see how it might be done. The first climbers to scale it did so in July 1954. Their achievement was certainly more boast-worthy than ours will be. They had very little safety gear – no harnesses and only static rope. We have brought all kinds of equipment, including comfortable harnesses and dynamic rope. There is no comparison. Nevertheless, we feel so great tottering atop the summit of Bladet that we yell out with joy.

MOHN’S TOP is the last challenge of the day. It’s a true mountain, one of the giants of Molladalen. Our guru, Helge Standal, is first up, jogging across the small crown as if it were the sidewalk of a medium-sized city in the Netherlands. We others move a little less casually, fixing a rope to help us at the most exposed point. No sense falling 300 m into the abyss so close to dinnertime. Once on top, beside a cairn, with a view over Hjørund Fjord and the best of the Sunnmøre Alps, Øyvind sits in a yellow jacket, smiling with his entire body. Carabiners jingle as Helge speaks softly about the various grades of technical difficulty in climbing. Several kilometres away, a ray of sun sweeps across Kolåstind. That’s when Øyvind utters the sentence that sums it all up: “Molladalen has got to be one of the best places in the world.”