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Falketind

In 1820 the Falketind (Falcon’s Peak) was conquered. Now, 190 years later, Norrøna is celebrating that achievement with a new falketind collection, and a new ascent of one of Norway’s most beautiful mountains.

“SECURE!” The shout comes from above, loud and clear, and bounces back and forth between the mountain walls. There is a tug on the rope. The protection equipment rattles. The sky changes from blue to grey. The summer of 2010 is fading away, but we are moving on. We are going higher. We are going up.

REWIND 190 YEARS IN TIME. On July 14 in the year of our Lord 1820, three young men walked out on a glacier deep in the Norwegian mountains. They were busy collecting flowers and rocks for scientific research. But there they were, on the glacier, and staring up at a beautiful mountain - a mountain bigger and more unassailable than any mountain they had ever seen. The three men deserve a brief introduction: 1) Christian Peder Bianco Boeck, 22, unusually interested in botany and later a physician and professor of physiology. 2) Baltazar Mathias Keilhau, 23, the son of a parson and later the first person in Norway to take a degree in minerals. Like his good friend Christian, he would also become a university professor, not in physiology but in geology. He tried to climb Norway’s highest mountain – Galdhøpiggen – in 1844, but only reached the next to last peak, which was named for him and is still called Keilhau’s Peak. 3) Ole Urdi, age unknown, a local reindeer hunter and mountain guide from the Østre Slidre district, no middle name, no points from the university, but there is no reason to doubt he was the fittest and the most experienced mountaineer of the three.

BOECK, KEILHAU AND URDI wondered whether they should head on from the glacier and up toward the top of the mountain. It looked steep. Terribly steep. For one reason or another, they decided to push on. They were brave. They wanted to go to the top. They wanted to be conquerors. Later, Keilhau described the climb: “Small creeks trickled down everywhere from the snow overhangs above. The water ran down our arms each time we grabbed a protruding rock or crack to pull ourselves up. I would not be far wrong to say the route upon which we climbed was 800 feet straight up from the glacier. After one is done moving from the solid mountain over the overhanging snow mass, the route up the backside is no longer dangerous. The summit is only a few steps wide, and has an extremely torn up appearance. It is hard to find solid rock, and the highest point looks like a random pile of stone.”

THE THREE REACHED THE SUMMIT. Some 56 years before the well-known British mountain climber William Cecil Slingsby became the first to ascend Store Skagastølstind, the third highest peak in Norway, three young amateurs managed to take on one of Scandinavia’s highest peaks. That was a feat unparalleled in Norwegian climbing history, and one that, in many ways, got less attention than it deserved.

THAT IS WHY WE ARE STANDING HERE NOW, on a small ledge, high above Falke Glacier, photographer Chris Holter and I, together with two of the best Norwegian climbers today. A third master climber, Robert, has already established a new anchor point 50 meters above us. He shouts down that we can follow. These three climbers, like their predecessors, deserve a brief introduction. 1) Robert Caspersen, 38, international mountain guide, and highly educated in sports psychology. He has been part of a number of difficult first ascents of routes in Norway, the Alps, the Himalyas and Queen Maud Land of the Antarctic. 2) Hilde Bjørgås, 26, graduate engineer and mountain climber with long experience from high walls in Norway, the United States and Greenland. 3) Bjørn-Eivind Årtun, 43, alpine climber and photographer with several spectacular expeditions under his belt from Patagonia, Alaska and Norway. We are, in other words, in good company.

WE CHOOSE a different and steeper route than those first climbers – and we end up with four steep pitches in a mix of solid and loose rock, dry passages, and wet moss, ledge systems, and vertical ascents. With Falketind up and to the left the whole time. And a majestic view of the Jotunheimen mountain range. It was Broeck, Keilhau and Urdi who came up with the idea of naming the mountains after the jotnene – or giants – of Norse mythology. That gave the area the name Jotun Mountains, inspired by the Riesengebirge (Giant Mountains) in Poland and the Czech Republic. The Norwegian poet and journalist Aasmund Olavsson Vinje didn’t think that was good enough and later changed the name to Jotunheimen, or “Jotun Home.”

WE CLIMB OVER THE EDGE of the mountain wall, and take a break on Falketind’s highest ridge. We look down on the first ascender’s route, and are impressed over what those young gentlemen dared to do 190 years ago. What were they thinking when they realized they would make it to the top? What were they thinking when they walked those last meters to the summit? And, not in the least, what were they thinking when Boeck got separated from the other two on the descent and wandered around alone in the wilderness all night in horrible weather before, in the early morning hours of the following day, “drenched” and “totally exhausted,” he found the others on the tiny ledge where Keilhau and Urdi had attempted to sleep.

WE REACH FALKETIND’S summit marker late in the afternoon. The view is expansive, to put it mildly, in all directions. There is Stølsnostind. There is Koldedalstind. There is Urdanostind. There are 3,500 square kilometers of Jotunheimen. Robert, Hilde and Bjørn-Eivind walk toward the edge of the precipice. They lie on their stomachs and stare straight down into the abyss, as if trying to find their own fear of heights. They resemble the first conquerors. And they don’t find the fear.

Text: Eivind Eidslott
Photos: Chris Holter, Robert Caspersen and Bjørn Eivind Årtun
Welcome to Falketind

Travel: About four hours by bus from Oslo or Bergen to the hamlet of Tyinkrysset. From there, a roughly 30 minute bus trip to the staffed mountain lodges Tyinholmen, Fondsbu and Eidsbugarden. In your own car, you can drive an extremely bad, unpaved road from Tyinholmen all the way to the national park border at Koldedalen valley.

Accommodation: At one of the staffed lodges or in a tent. Check www.fondsbu.no, www.eidsbugarden-hotell.no and www.tyinholmen.no.

The trek up: If you stay at one of the mountain lodges, you can sign up for a guided tour to Falketind and have organized motor vehicle transport to Koldedalen. As an alternative, you can follow the trail from Fondsbu/Eidsbugarden or walk/bike/hitchhike along the dirt road to Koldedalen valley from Tyinholmen. If you camp in a tent all the way into Koldedalen, you are already near Falketind. The normal route goes in the Morka-Koldedalen valley and then steeply up the mountainside above Andrevatnet Lake. From there, it’s loose rubble, partly on glaciers, to the top. An alternative route is over Falkebreen, which means Falcon Glacier, and up the Pioneer Route used by the first team, or steeper climbing alternatives to the left of the Pioneer Route. Whichever way you choose, you are strongly advised to bring rope, an ice axe, crampons and protection equipment.

More information: www.tyinaktiv.no, and the Norwegian guidebooks ”Klatrefører for Jotunheimen” (Norsk Tindeklub) or ”Fotturer i Jotunheimen” (Iriss forlag).