Ice-climbing
Today started bright and early while we got picked up at the reception of our lodge. We assembled at the local tourist information point to gather all our gear to go ice-climbing. This means some sturdy boots, climbing irons a safety-harness and a helmet. After a complete dress-up we drove to a nine-meter-high waterfall. Meanwhile, the wind had picked up a lot. This lowered the temperature from -6 degrees Celsius to a feeling temperature of -13 degrees Celsius. So we were waiting at the bottom of the waterfall for our turn to go up, while being blasted with wind and snow.
Climbing a frozen waterfall is in its basics not extremely different from normal climbing. So my (very basic and dated) bouldering skills did help a bit. At least it prevented me from climbing up with my arms and dying from muscle-ache the day after. But, of course, the way you hang on to the wall is quite different. Now there are no helpful ledges or bumps to hold on to. You have to jam two pickaxes for your arms and ram some special spikes on your boots into the wall to hang on. This is all fine until your axe breaks off or your foot bounces from the wall. This can mean you slip and slam into the wall. Quite fun and painful. It took a few tries, but we all made it up there. While slowly freezing in the wind the guides offered us hot lindenberry juice to keep warm. And then it was time to return to our cabin.
Walk around Abisko
After some much need hot coffee we went out for a walk on snow shoes through the nature park. Abisko is a big nature preservation area, the first in Europe. But with all the snow and ice not easy to travel around. So we got some snowshoes from the cabin, drove to the start of a trail and started our journey. We followed some water upstream into the hills until the path was closed because of snowfall. So we turned around and followed the river down-stream through a wild canyon to the big lake at the base. Walking with snow-shoes on is quite fun. You can walk on very loose snow and with lots of grip on slanted surfaces. Snow shoes work a bit like the klapschaats design from Dutch ice-skating. So the platform at the bottom flips open to stay in contact with the ground while you take a step. So walking around doesn’t take much extra energy. The only thing you can’t do is walk backwards. Your soles will grip on the floor, and you will go down… quite hilariously even. Some of us already had experience with the snow shoes from our last trip (see: Antarctica) but we also had some first-timers in our group. But they picked up quick enough after some tumbling.
After the ice-climbing and our walk we were all exhausted. Gladly we had a reservation at the restaurant at our lodge. So we could go back drink some coffee and chill until it was time to get something to eat. But then…
First Aurora Borealis
As soon as we stepped outside to go to the restaurant we noticed a bright streak across the sky. We’ve just got our first taste of the Northern Light. The streak was green-grayish lazily curled trough the sky, all the way across. Through the camera’s it lit up brightly as a green wave folding and twirling like smoke. It was an impressive sight to behold. It kind of reminded me from the background on the Playstation 3 menu. We delayed our dinner by at least half-an-hour to admire the spectacle. It was quite a challenge to get a good picture on camera. But we got a good moment to play with longer exposures and other settings to get the pictures we wanted. Afterward it slowly dissipated into a green hue across the sky. Now we could enjoy our dinner and defrost our fingers.
To end the night we had a nice toast to celebrate our first encounter with the Aurora Borealis. Then we had to repackage our luggage to leave bright and early the next day for another awesome activity.