10 January 2010

First Ice of the Year - Starefossen


Its very cold in Bergen, as it is in most of Europe. Temperature at the evil lair has been down at -15 and the house is not really designed for that, The fat cat is less than impressed.

This does have some upsides though. The perfect blue skies and the covering of snow make everything look very pretty and the ice falls around town are in condition. There is a waterfall that sits above Bergen called Starefossen which I have had my eye on for 7 years, but I have never seen it in properly frozen. Well it is now!

So with a headache from too many saturday night beers I headed up there today with Sandy and, much to our suprise there was a queue. Two other parties, who had obviously not been out until 2am drinking were ahead of us. Given that it is only a 2 minute walk from the road, I guess its not that surprising really.

I have never seen the fall up close but it looked like two tidy pitches. I lead the first which was about 30 m of 70-80 degree ice and very pleasent. We then sat on a ledge looking over the town which was bathed in a blanket of snow beautifully lit by the winter sun. We spent about half an hour waiting for the party of three is front of us to move, which they did, slowly. Then Sandy dispatched the top pitch which was a ramp followed by a 10 m vertical section and then the top.

An excellent way to spend an afternoon in town...


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