A 2 week Traverse of the Lyngen Alps, Norway [100pics]
t's been a dream of mine for years now to Traverse the Lyngen Alps from the Southern point all the way to the northern shores. I've been lucky enough to have it my backyard minus a 7 hour drive from Rovaniemi, Finland and have been visiting the zone for late Spring the past 5 years. In 2016 I was planning on going at it solo but with a low snowpack decided it was best wait until the conditions were prime and it all lined up in May 2017.
My friend Ilkka from Rovaniemi was in immediately and we poured over the maps deciding that we would take 2 weeks allowing us to take our time and go via a more adventurous route. From there we told our friends Jamie Weeks and Wiggles and asked if they had any interest and like that it was A Finn a Canadian and 2 Americans off on a Traverse of the Lyngen Alps.
From the car we immediately walked into a storm as we had predetermined dates and decided it's better to get a file miles knocked off compared to waiting for who knows how long in hopes of a solid forecast.
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We skinned until reaching the cloud cap and after finding a few trees for some shelter put down camp with the intentions of moving the moment viability improved. Well.......this lasted for 2 days.
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After a full 12 hour in the tent we built a snow shelter out of boredom and so we could all freely move around
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After 2 days the clouds lifted a few hundred meters so we skinned another mile and found a shelter. Since we couldn't see into the peaks we decided to wait it out once again to the next day.
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Finally the weather broke the next morning so to gain ground that we had lost due to the storm we skinned all day until the last rays. In total we did half the southern portion in a single day.
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Until we made it to a hut to call home for the night.
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Once again the weather deteriorated so we had to make a decision, stay on our original route our stick to the Eastern portion which is mainly benches but had the benefit of better weather via the rain shadow we went to the east which allowed us to ski to a small village in hopes of resupplying at a store only to find the local shop shut down a year prior.
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So it was time to get back into the mountains
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The weather hadn't really changed and visibility in the high country was still a white out so that night we slept on the porch of yet again another sweet Norwegian Hut
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The next day was still near visibility but we would be going through familiar territory form me so we pushed through a white out with the wind of the high country valley roaring past us.
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Reaching our final hut and final night in the Southern portion of Lyngen, out of 6 days we really only got in 1 good day of travel.
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The next day we pushed along the dismal weather all the way to the town of Lyngsedit which is the Split between the Southern and Northern parts of Lyngen.
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Where we picked up our food cache, stopped by the grocery store and slept next to a cemetery while we laughed off the horrible weather we had experienced and hoped we wouldn't have to do the whole route in such dire conditions.
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