The approach up to Holländaren follows a faint path, it is beautiful but fairly steep and long. The landscape is littered with rocks that makes the walk strenuous, but occasionally life becomes easier when low angled granite slabs break up the monotonous rock hopping. On our way, we are passing several pretty streams that here and there dissolves over the slabs and spray the rock with water, the scenery is hypnotizing. During the hour and a half that it takes to the hut there is room for reflection and thought, the sensation of being here and now is overwhelming when I'm on a mission in the mountains; the surroundings are too intense to let anything else in. What I have in front of me and the experience that will come with it, is everything.
When looking at the walls that surrounds the hut, I wonder why I haven't heard people talking about this place. The walls are sprayed with perfect lines that are hard to resist, but Cody and I, we have our aim elsewhere. We got a tip from a friend living in Tromsö that the Masta sector apparently had a clean forty meter finger crack that no one had climbed before.
We planned this first day at Kvaloya to be a warm up for the big mission on Blåmann, this turned out not to be the case in the end..
When walking up to Masta we saw the obvious line and were surprised that it hadn't been climbed before. It's an alternative pitch in between Ikaros and Sentralruta which starts with a vertical crack section that eventually becomes steeper, while the crack becomes thinner. The crux section is thin and strenuous to protect, but the gear is perfect...
On one of my attempts, while still trying to figure out how to best protect the crux I had decided to go for a micro stopper. Were it was placed it was bomber, however I knew there was a chance that the upward force generated by the rope could pull it out.
I had climbed all the way up to the last bad rest before I had to commit and pull through the crux. A bit nervous and tired I tried to psych myself up and started climbing methodically. First a mono finger lock, then a shallow two finger lock, then into strenuous lay backing on small side pulls. From here I placed the stopper strenuously. Now I had to be quick. Right hand out on side pull, left hand strenuously up on another bad side pull, pulling up my feet on bad smears. About one meter above my last piece and maybe three above my second last piece at this point. I was about to go for the last hard move when I saw the stopper spinning downwards around the rope… Fuck…one meter had become three.. a two meter fall had become a six meter fall.. shit.. ok keep it together, I looked up again and tried to focus on the last move. Common.. I won't fall.. Looking down again.. It's going to be a long fall. I tried to down climb but before I had time to react I was in the air.. I hope the last micro stopper will catch my fall... and then I stopped, the piece had held. Relieved I started to laugh.
The next attempt, both me and Cody did it. We solved the protection issue by simply skipping the last piece and instead ran it out. What we thought would be a quick mission turned out to be a four day fight so our Blåmann mission had to wait for our next visit.
We dubbed the route Loki and the grade is a bit uncertain but I don't feel ashamed grading it 7c+ :)!
