Iceland 2013/2014 - Snow and TRs

A snowHead

Yeah it's pretty deep in parts of the country:
http://icelandreview.com/news/2014/02/24/some-roads-reopen-east-fjords

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Went up north to Akureyri last weekend. Great trip with work people but most of the skiing looked like this:

The mountains are absolutely stacked with snow as well. Last year had a pretty huge dump right at the start of the year and a reasonable snowfall afterwards but this year has just been amazing. The ski area is normally navigable in dodgy conditions thanks to the clumps of rocks that poke out. Not so right now as the entire thing is pretty much skiable. The cliffs that are still stood proud are also white! It opens up a pretty huge amount of terrain but also gives lots of opportunities to fall off unexpected drops. Was still good fun and bodes well for a long season hopefully extending into June.

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meh, you've got that the wrong way up!

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altis,

It was pretty hairy on occasion. They're building some pro sized jumps at the moment for a comp this week so have a digger on site and I nearly got taken out by the invisible trenches the tracks had made. Nothing like finding a series of three foot high solid ridges when you're trucking on the easy run in to the lift but it demonstrated the elasticity the Beasts provide quite nicely and I didn't fall so it was all good.

These are the jumps mid build:

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Also Whitedot have made it over here in a much larger way than just me skiing about. There are Preachers to rent in up the mountain in Akureyri and a coworker just stopped me to talk about his demoing Redeemers recently cause I'm wearing a branded t-shirt today.

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30cm of snow in downtown Reykjavik! Pow pow pow tomorrow.

After all it is free

Was still snowing heavily whilst skiing. Zero vis though so we only did a few laps and then went home. Full on motion sickness inducing and the access road was pretty scary at times.

Ooo, excitement the Salomon Freeski peeps are coming over to Iceland.

Ooo, I think one Mr. Fransson is part of it.

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meh, Love the night photo Smile

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meh, arriving in a week and hoping we don't bring the warm with us. am in Flims this weekend which should be an interesting contrast!

snow reports

chrisJersey, nice, it's still snowing pretty constantly up North so you're going to have an awesome time.

Snow up North is ridiculous:

Snow down South has been pretty crazy too. Proper pow day on Thursday but followed by high winds then sun caused this pretty sizable slide:

I had my first good visibility skiing in the sun day this season so spent it reacquainting myself with air time. Very Happy

You know it makes sense.

meh, Nice. Nicer when you can see Toofy Grin

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

just arrived at arctic heli. the salomon freeski people are here, leaving tomorrow and we have just finished dinner to step outside and see a perfect northern lights display. amazing with the naked eye but even better with camera and tripod.

link here: http://instagram.com/p/mHucmhGuTW/

weather tomorrow looks clear currently. trip report to follow.

A snowHead

Fabulous. Look forward to the full skinny Smile

A snowHead

chrisJersey, awesome looking forward to seeing what you get up too!

Have some great pics of avalanches in Bláfjöll I'll post later. Huge inbounds slide!

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

What do you get when you take a pretty big dump, followed by very high winds, followed by lots of warming and rain?

For scale on the in-bounds slide if you go to the full sized image you can see two small dots at the top of the slope in the middle. Those are people. The crown was between a couple of feet to 3-4m!

Everything was well frozen again when I went up so there was much rutted ice skating with a teensy bit of fresh:

Blafjoll 28-03 from Charles Palmer

https://vimeo.com/90409225

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Also seen a few photos of the weather conditions that chrisJersey is enjoying up north and am very jealous.

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Mattias Fredriksson photo from his time with the Salomon Freeski crew

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Last day today. Perfect spring conditions every day of our stay - forecast also good for today. Skiing until 1930 absolutely doable with the snow remaining corn all day. 11,800 metres vertical skied yesterday using 2 hours of flying time and more would easily be possible. This place is unique - trip report to follow.

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

chrisJersey, glad you had a good time. I'm actually heading up north this weekend although the weather appears to be on the change so I don't think we'll get the nice weather you had.

After all it is free

Mike Pow, cosmic!

Day 1: WOW air flight from gatwick to kevlavik airport (this is the international airport - most flights in seem to be from North America). About a 3 hour flight. Then Taxi to Reykyavik Airport (the domestic airport) took 45 minutes so we had time to pop into Reykyavik for a look before our flight to Akureyri (up North) at 1845. Quirky (in a good way) main street with lots of bars and restaurants on it. Back to the domestic airport and flew to Akukeyri, about 45 minutes. Picked up by the lodge for a 45 minute drive to the arcticheliskiing lodge. The Northern Lights are out in a big way as we come out from dinner and the Salomon Freeski team kindly show us their photographer's output.

Day 2: breakfast at 0800, transceiver training and safety briefing (all very much Canada style, no surprise as the guides have worked there), lunch in the lodge, first heli at 1330. 7500 metres vertical; spring snow, 9 heli lifts, bluebird, absolutely amazing views of the Troll peninsula with sea views as you ski. There were just 8 guests in the lodge (2 groups of 4 on private packagaes) so we see no one else all day. The other group return at 1930 (it is not dusk until around 2030. By June it is light nearly 24 hours)

Day 3 another blue sky, no wind day. First lift at 1015. Still hard pack so we wait it out for 45 minutes in a valley. Then access spring snow all day. Lunch on a peak with 360 degree views of the terrain. 9100 metres vertical skied. Our pilot is a legend - he can draw pictures in the snow with the skids of the helicopter (not with us in it). We ski down to the beach on what they call the Gold Coast

Day 4: Same again except we head further East. We have lunch on a small offshore island. The heli lands on a concrete pontoon and we sit in the sun with young seals popping their heads up to check us out. Back at 1830 after 11,800 metres vertical and 2 hours fly time. We now have just 18 minutes flytime left. Extra hour Euro 2,200 for 4.

Day 5: the plan (flawed with hindsight) is to heli and ski over towards the airport and then end there. As it turns out we have to contend with fog in the valley which makes flying to the airport impossible. We stop at the helipad at the Akureyri ski hill and are driven to the airport. Flight at 1845, dinner in a good restaurant in Reykyavik and a 0430 pick up for our flight the next morning. Back to work by lunch the next day.

Other stuff:
- we did a private heli (as opposed to semi private). I think it is worth the premium here
- our guide (Einar) was great. JB, the owner and IFGMA guide, is also very laid back
- I took touring set up and there were various tourers about including ones using heli assist ie one lift into the terrain. Would be handy to be able to tour in poor weather
- lodge skis are good quality eg Volkl Mantra, Gotama etc. I took my own but you don't need to
- all Avi kit is good. ABS Bags can be rented but was low risk while we were there.
- the lodge includes beers which helps as they are expensive in iceland
- each pair of guests sleeps in a small bedroom hut thing with one bed down stairs and one up in the eaves, perfect for 2 men. Good quality beds etc
- food is high quality and changes daily
- wine is extra but fairly priced for Iceland
- staff super friendly and very laid back

Photos to follow if I can work out how

Summary: absolutely worth a visit for heli accessed spring snow (powder would be relatively rare) bearing in mind the unique location and proximity to the UK

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Look forward to the pics.

Cost please?

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Thanks Mike Pow. Have managed to put some thumbnails into the TR page. Too many photos to whittle down just now though.

Costs are on website. Costs are all a bit subjective but we thought it was good value. Flights over were cheap. Heli price inclusive of pretty well everything ie not much else to fork out while over there.

Going semi private reduces cost significantly but we thought it was worth the premium - I can explain if anyone needs.

You know it makes sense.

My pleasure.

You just put [IMG] before the link and [/IMG] after it.

Seems to be at the high end for heliskiing when you work out the day rate.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

Took our 4 month old daughter up North and enjoyed an awesome spring weekend. Took it in turns with the girlfriend to ski then hung out with the baby asleep outside chilling in the half haze. We also did some line spotting. Smile

A snowHead

Just back from six days ski touring on the Troll Peninsula. Am off to a wedding in Scotland so the Trip Report will have to wait until I get back and collate all the pictures. Great trip with some of my better touring days. Loads of snow still.

A snowHead

Icelandic Spring is awesome, the evenings are endless. After we put the baby to bed I grabbed my gear and headed up to the local ski area to skin up to a nearby slope I'd had my eye on all season. A short skin later and I was stood at the top of an awesome, open corn slope...

One Run @ Bláfjöll - Spring Touring Edition from Charles Palmer

https://vimeo.com/95912620

The aftermath:

Just waiting on one more set of photos for the touring TR.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Last year my friends Nick and Caroline got engaged whilst we were on a ski trip in Japan. Whilst there we were trying to hatch plans for a stag do that would involve skiing. Nick eventually settled on a week of ski touring in Iceland and started the ball rolling getting people to sign up. No mean feat considering most of the people invited live in Australia and New Zealand! In the end there were seven of us in total with a fairly broad range of snow skills and touring experience. We managed to ski on five out of six days we were there and missed out on a seventh day because people had to leave early to avoid airport workers striking. We were amazingly lucky with the weather having only two really cloudy days so consequently there are lots of really sunny shots coming up! Smile

The first mountain we skied was Kaldbakur which is 1173m high. I toured this last year and it's the perfect warm up/skills check/kit shake out route. If you come here with a guided trip the chances are this will be on the itinerary. The approach is long and steady from near sea level all the way up to a broad summit ridge. From the summit there are a number of different options and directions you can drop down most of which are reasonably steep. As it was the first day and most people hadn't skied in a few months we opted to ski back a similar way to the ascent route. Although we did drop down a short steep section in the corrie as our first pitch. Then it was a quick gang-ski to the bottom on great corn with amazing views out over the fjord.

The approximate route up in red and down in green.

Gearing up at the car.

Easy skinning with awesome weather equals big smiles!

About to drop into the first pitch.

Nick putting in his first few turns in months.

The aftermath.

The group charging down to the fjord below.

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On our second day we headed up to a sub-peak of a ridge line near Ólafsfjörður to ski the steep bowl Gvendarskál which stands at around nearly 1000m. Our original goal had been to summit Arnfinnsfjall (853m) which is a much steeper peak with some really nice descents but on our approach we met a Scottish group that had given up because the snow had not refrozen and they had been wallowing waist deep on the bootpack they had put in the day before. Our replacement was North facing and in much better condition. Sadly by the time we descended the snow had turned to crap but we still got a good steep ski in and a funnish blast to the bottom. My lack of touring conditioning this year really showed and I was completely knackered by the time we hit the cars again.

The Route (routes down are the various taken by different sub-groups):

A bit more mountainlike than the majority of Kaldbakur

Lunch break with great views down on Ólafsfjörður and the fjord.

Anarcho-skinning.

Nick on the sub-peak's summit.

Nick's drop in point to the bowl. The little dots on the plateau beneath are everyone else waiting.

My view of the blind roll, hoping I'm stood in the right spot!

Knackered.

After skiing we took a short drive through the tunnel to look at a completely empty fjord. We'd be back here later for some skiing.

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Wow.

Still loads of snow.

How much longer do you think?

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This is from a few weeks ago. Stuff will be skiable with decent descents into late-June for sure in the North and East. The heli-op season normally lasts that long. I'm going to take skis on summer holiday in July this year just in case there is anything tasty as there was huge amounts of snow this year.

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Day three marked a change to worse weather with a low cloud ceiling so we opted to take a bit of a road-trip to see local tourist attractions to the east of Akureyri. The Mývatn area is highly worth checking out on a down day, lots of good stuff to see and the 'nature baths' to have a dip in.

Nick and Craig contemplate a drizzly Goðafoss.

Dimmuborgir.

After all it is free

Day Four saw us skinning up from the ski area nursing hangovers. There are some nice bowls an easy skin from the top of the lifts. Although we did get cameras out to capture some skiing.

Top of the skin track on the plateau looking back into the ski area.

A rare photo of me skiing. (Photo Jake)

Craig heading into the choke of a nice steep line. (Photo Demetre)

Another rare shot of me skiing down towards the clouds. (Photo Demetre)

Day five saw a return of the dreaded cloud but we went out anyway in the hopes it would lift. The objective today was *something* in the empty fjord Héðinsfjörður. I'd not skied anything up in this part of the peninsula so we pulled up dragged out the map and decided on Pallahnjúkur which stands at 861m and has a load of nice steep slopes on all aspects. Sadly as we hit the saddle between Pallahnjúkur and Fýlaskálahnjúkar we were in a whiteout with no signs of it shifting so ended up turning around about 200m shy of the summit. It's definitely a mountain I'll be back too though. The ski down was excellent though and we made up for our lack of adventurousness by heading onto the Northern tip of the peninsula where Demetre hiked half a couloir in filthy weather whilst we huddled in the cars. Little Angel

The Route.

Things not looking great at sea level.

Some steepish skinning right out of the gate on firm snow.

The weather is not improving but there was some excellent surf on the beach at the bottom of the fjord.

Heading up into the murk just before the skinning got steep, exposed and excitingly firm.

Whiteout at the saddle. There was a humongous cornice about 20m back from where we were guarding the drop into the next valley which we contemplated but ultimately decided discretion was the better part of valor being unable to see the terrain.

Nick putting some careful turns in above rockbands.

Big smiles at the bottom despite the weather.

Demetre about to hit the start of his couloir just before the weather closed in.

Fist bumps and a beer for the guy who wasn't completely lazy.

Next stop the Arctic ice sheet.

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cool pics
thanks for posting

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Iceland 2013/2014 - Snow and TRs

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