Langlitinden - en suveren topp! (23.04.2019)  

The weather south looked more promising than in Lyngen for this week, so we decided to start our prolonged easter holidays down in Andørja. Paal had been to Langlitinden in summer and was keen to give it a try on skis. We drove to Straumbotn and set up camp at the start of the trail. It had been heavy rain and gale-force winds all night and morning, but according to the forecast, things were set to clear up in the afternoon. After lunch sheltering from the wind inside the tent, the weather started getting better and we decided around 330pm that we would try our luck. We started carrying our skis up the well-marked trail for the first 20 minutes, before we hit the first continuous patches of snow.

© Innika De Rosa

© Innika De Rosa

Here we switched to skis and continued following the summer route all the way up. We had to cross back and forth across the stream a few times, with the widest crossing over the river just before 500moh. Paal managed no problems here, but my shorter legs had some difficulties. After attempting an awkward split, I ended up with one ski in the river and had tweaked one of my hip flexor muscles, an old injury from last year that I was annoyed to feel again. We did a left-foot-over traverse towards the backside of the ridge. Between 500 and 700moh we followed the summer trail through a steeper section of rocks, which was pretty exposed, before we flattened out a bit and could see the summit clearly.

© Innika De Rosa

© Innika De Rosa

© Innika De Rosa

© Innika De Rosa

© Innika De Rosa

We continued up, staying to the left hand side of the ridge as there was quite a few cornices on the top. It was really warm today, and we had seen lots of signs of activity, particularly cornices breaking off and triggering avalanches down the slopes. The snow was really soft and we both slid a lot while walking up. I put on the ski crampons to see if that would help, but ended up taking them off after a while as they didn’t help much and were annoying. The snow was surprisingly more and more rotten the higher we got, especially near the rocks on the left hand side of the ridge. We left our skiis by the big boulder a few meters from the summit and walked by foot to the top. The views were absolutely stunning!!

© Innika De Rosa

© Innika De Rosa

© Innika De Rosa

After a long break (and a lot of photos) we started getting ready to head down. The light got more and more beautiful by the minute, and the whole trip down was bathed in orange as we watched the sun set on the fjord. Followed the same path on the way down, a mix of nice spring slush and of course a bit of luggeføre. What a wonderful experience to be entirely alone in such a wild and beautiful place. Tusen takk for turen Paal! Flottere bilder kan sees hos uglefisk (Paal Andre Lund) �