For the final student organised trip, myself and Scott headed to Romsdal. I had been here before in the Summer of 2017 however I loved it so much and there was plenty I hadn’t managed to do that I was keen to return and see the area in a slightly earlier in the season setting. Arriving there took the same method. We took trains to Åndalsnes and slept the night just outside of the town, by the river. Here was a complication. Because the weather was good we had chose to bivvy. I had my headnet so I wasn’t too concerned about the mosquitoes but they really started to swarm. I fell asleep no problem but when I awoke in the morning my face was massively swollen. It was embarrassing and I looked ridiculous but I lived with it, it settled down after a couple of days. From there we hiked ~20km with heavy kit down the Isterdalen valley and up the path alongside the Trollstigen road  the following morning. At the top we passed the centre and found a flat spot to pitch my tent by the river. Here was our basecamp and we could not transition to our far more reasonable daypacks. Our first outing was up a local mountain named Bispen (the Bishop). This was an easy grade one scramble with a short walk in. I had done this before but it was fun to do again and show Scott the stunning panoramic views. It only took us a few hours but that was fine as we had set off in the afternoon. We descended and cooked our dinner down at the car park of the Trollstigen centre. It was out of the wind here and there was benches, toilets and it was only 5 minutes from my tent. We packed our bags for the following day and went to sleep.

The next day was a bigger one but again one I had done before. We were heading up to the top of the Trollveggen rock face and hopefully the top of Trollstinden, the respective mountain summit. This rock wall is world famous as it is the highest vertical rock wall in Europe, standing over the valley bottom 1km below and overhanging by as much as 50m. Rock climbing does happen on the wall, including daring winter ascents but I have heard that it is far less popular since a significant rockfall in ’97 which destroyed the most popular route. In addition to this the mountain seems to largely be a series of stacked rocks as opposed to some well bound geological structure. The rocks are so loose but well stacked that they seem to exist just fine without human impact but could come loose at any moment with sufficient force. Scott suggested we take our time and aim to watch the sun set from the top and I agreed so we set off mid-afternoon again. We hiked up the main trail and climbed up to a snowy plateau. Here I donned my crampons and began practicing techniques with my ice axe. While the snow was soft and like wet sugar meaning crampons weren’t really necessary, it was a perfect place for Scott to chill while I practiced skills for my upcoming stint in Chamonix with Brad. I practiced all the movement basics such as ice axe arrests from a variety of positions and falls and on a varying gradient of slope. The snow quality made it difficult to pull them off but they did all eventually hold. I also practiced glissading and making shoddy anchors which didn’t really work, again with the snow (it was a very warm day with direct sunlight). Eventually we headed up to the first view over the edge. Although not Trollveggen the view is still as mind blowing and although I had seen it before it was still a view that made you wobbly. Eventually we began to traverse and climb the loose boulder fields and snow patches. In retrospect we should perhaps have considered roping up for this section considering the runouts of several hundred metres on these very steep snow patches but Scott didn’t know how to kiwi coil so it wasn’t worth stopping us to learn. However, we were reassured at the time after seeing people returning in trainers at the bottom without even the reassurance of having an axe. For this reason, we felt over equipped with our axes, mountaineering boots and helmets. Nonetheless we pushed on however it took a very long time. We reached the top late however by virtue of the Northern location it didn’t really matter and the sun was still setting/rising. The view was mind blowing even though we didn’t reach the very summit. The descent was hard and Scott was slowing up. It was also harder as the snow was refreezing making the use of crampons more likely to be needed. We didn’t however as the vast majority was snow/ice free and it would have slowed us down massively. The steps were also very clearly kicked in. We arrived back at the tent at 4am and although I felt ok Scott was broken and had several blisters on his feet. We went to sleep and indeed we slept very well.

I woke up at 10am ready to go (a little crazy) and decided that since I was going to be on my own this day I would do something I hadn’t done before; Kongen (The King). This is one of the famous three peaks in the valley, the others being the previously mentioned Bispen and Dronninga (The Queen). Kongen was rated as YDS class 4 which as someone who does a lot of scrambling, I was comfortable doing solo. The route begins the same way as Bispen’s but splits at a saddle and heady in the opposite direction. This is one of the coolest routes I’ve ever done as it has it all if you like scrambling. Again, the rock quality near the summit isn’t great but for the majority of the route I was pleasantly surprised. The route starts with a ridge, passes into a gully, follows an easy traverse and then a short vertical climb and then another gully to the summit. Almost the whole route is exclusively scrambling, none of it full rock climbing but extremely exposed and hard by scrambling standard in certain sections. Eventually I reached the summit and recorded my name in the log book. To my shock I was the 19^th person to the summit this year, with all the other names hailing from two previous parties, both summiting within the week. I descended the route, with it feeling much sketchier now and reached the car park by 7pm, thoroughly fulfilled. I was however dismayed to discover the next morning that while I believed myself to be alone the mountain, there was one other person; I had narrowly missed my mountaineering/trail running idol Kilian Jornet by a margin of no more than half an hour. He’s a local in the area however it was a shame not see the man and speak to him in person.

The following morning we descended the valley as Scott wasn’t too happy with the condition of his feet and made our way back to the train station. All in all this was without a doubt one of the favourite trips I did and even though I’ve been there twice now, I’ll definitely be back