The route
Vestpillaren is a ten pitch route on the peerless Presten cliff in the
Lofoten islands of Arctic Norway. Mountain Project describes it as "
one of the better long 5.10 free climbs you will ever do".
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Presten from the north
Vestpillaren takes the skyline, approximately |
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| Presten from the south with six climbers on Vestpillaren |
The context
I forget when I first became aware of Lofoten. It is possible that the book "Exotic Rock", mentioned
here, played a role. Anyway, some time in the 1990s, I acquired its first english language climbing guidebook, "
Climbing in the Magic Islands", and became interested in visiting the place. In 2000 I achieved this, though in the form of a non-climbing road trip with Shoko and Leo. We drove all the way from London to the Arctic Circle and back over two weeks, aside from the Newcastle-Bergen crossing and 24 hours southbound on the
Hurtigruten coastal ferry.
At the time we had the use of an entertaining, if distinctly "boy-racer",
Impreza Turbo, which I had persuaded my employers to buy me instead of the standard BMW 3- or 5-series that young professionals were supposed to drive. This made the long journey excellent fun and shorter than it might have been, though it now embarrasses me to think of the number of times I impatiently overtook sensible Scandinavians on the single-lane
coast road. I loved Norway, which in many ways is like British Columbia, though with fewer trees and even more bare granite.
On that trip we spent a few days in Lofoten, in a cod fisherman's hut renovated for tourists just outside the amazing fishing port of Henningsvær. The town is built on an archipelago of granite islands linked by bridges and causeways. (It is one of a surprisingly
long list of European towns dubbed the "Venice of the North".) We drove under the Presten cliff but I only really appreciated its awesomeness when we were leaving the islands by boat. From the deck Presten became the last object visible on the horizon as the coast receded, like a 500m tall ski-jump sticking out of the sea.
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| Leo and Shoko with Presten |
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| Lofoten from the Hurtigruten coastal boat service |
Two years later, a couple of major life changes created the opportunity to climb Presten. One was that I finally left London in early 2002, after being ejected from the firm where I had worked for most of the previous nine years. A complex merger, then de-merger, with a US firm had sealed my fate, as I had gone out of my way to work with the americans, rather than ignore them, as it seemed our vile London boss expected us to do. On the positive side, various deferred compensation, that I had accumulated with that firm, was all released at once in my payout, so I briefly felt quite rich. We spent the early part of 2002 travelling - to Australia and Japan - then returned to the UK to live temporarily with my sister Sally in Oxford. She was pleased to have company as her husband Charlie had died the previous year. I did not feel any immediate pressure to find another job so began thinking about other long-term ambitions that I could fulfill.
The other major change for me was getting onboard the social media juggernaut, which at that time meant web forums, specifically for me the "
UKC" climbing forum. In my last year or so in London, I was astounded to discover that it was possible to squander the day chatting about climbing while ostensibly "working" at my desk. Some time in late 2001 there was a thread on ambitions for the next year. I mentioned Vestpillaren, then read this intriguing response:
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| The post on the UKClimbing forum that set this adventure in motion |
At that time UKC was small enough that there were only two people overtly posting as a "Toby". Inevitably this meant that I had already taken an interest in TobyA. He appeared to be a Scotsman with a Finnish wife, working in Helsinki in a glamorous-sounding policy think-tank. His fairly numerous posts suggested a genuine climbing lifer though (healthily?) not a grade-obsessed one. I forget how and when his first post crystallised into a firm plan. These days the concept of real-life encounters with strangers met on the internet has become wholly normal, but in 2002 it seemed quite eccentric. At some stage in our planning Toby, who perhaps had less faith in me than I in him, proposed a telephone conversation to break the ice. My main takeaway from this was that he was not in fact Scottish - a distinct positive. I also learned that he would indeed be driving the 1500km from Helsinki to Lofoten and with two Finnish friends. Comically, they were both named "Toni" ...
So, in early August 2002, I flew from London to Oslo then onward on a much smaller plane to Bodo, just inside the Arctic Circle. Reading the diary while researching this post, I was reminded that my luggage hadn't followed me to Bodo and that I was forced to bivouac outside the airport while waiting for it. Somehow I had completely forgotten this, which is strange as even in summer a night out without any camping gear at that latitude should have been quite cold/ memorable. The next day my stuff appeared and I was able to take another flight, to Svolvaer on the Lofoten islands. Grandly I was the only passenger. At luggage retrieval the only visible employee in the tiny airport pointed at my bouldering pad as it was spat out of the carousel, and asked whether I was a climber. I was and so was he. This seemed a good omen.
Toby, Toni and Toni then appeared to collect me, sardined into a very small hatchback, and drove me to the campsite where they had set up the previous day. I liked them all straight away. We managed to climb that day despite light rain. I discovered that Toby was a much better climber than his self-deprecating web posts suggested. In the evenings the Finns lit a campfire and barbecued magnificently unhealthy-looking greasy sausages which they washed down with vodka. I broke out a bottle of Talisker acquired in duty free. Toby and I did some planning.
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| Toni, Toni, Toby |
On my previous visit to Lofoten rain had made an appearance almost every day so I was somewhat paranoid that our week might pass without a decent weather window. Looking at a forecast it seemed the next day might be our best bet. However we both knew it would be sensible to do some more shorter climbs together before committing to a long multi-pitch. A tough call. In the end we decided we should just get on Vestpillaren in the morning.
However, when we arrived below Presten there were already other parties ahead of us. So we decided to roll the dice and hope that the next day would still be dry. Instead we climbed on a smaller cliff, Festvåg, climbing two routes, Puffin Club and
The Skier, of which I only remember the latter. The diary states that I dislodged a rock at the top of The Skier which hit Toby's hand and left him with some worrying bruising. (I had forgotten about this too.) To his great credit, he gritted his teeth, ignored the injury and stayed committed to the Vestpillaren plan.
The ascent
Thankfully the next day dawned equally fine. As far as I recall, Toni and Toni drove us to the base of Presten and abandoned us with the intent to meet in the bar in nearby Hennngsvaer that evening. "Climbing in the Magic Islands" listed two ways to climb Vestpillaren: the "normal" and the "direct". The latter looked like much better climbing but upped the ante with more "hard" pitches (how hard was tricky to gauge as the guidebook used mysterious Norwegian grades). We chose that option. In retrospect a very good choice as the normal way now seems rarely climbed and I think we might now be feeling cheated had we not done the route "properly". I recall the third pitch of the direct feeling quite hard, pulling a bulge between a couple of slanting grooves out of sight of the belayer. I worried slightly that it might challenge Toby but he seconded it fine. A feature of climbing with him was the union jack sticker on top of his helmet. I guess there were not many Brit climbers in Finland. It always amused me when it came into view.
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| Toby following Vestpillaren's crux pitch 3 |
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| that helmet |
Just above that section is a long ledge, the Storhylla, where the normal and direct ways converged. I started to relax at this point. According to the guide the "direct" was harder than anything above (
newer guidebooks suggest otherwise!) so it seemed we were very likely to complete the route. There was one distinct crux pitch ahead of us, a slanting corner, that looked like it could be awkward. I was slightly apprehensive before leading this but it proved to be fabulous climbing: a thin crack that could be laybacked or finger-jammed with plenty of small footholds. As we got higher on the face the water in the ocean below turned a translucent turquoise in the sunlight. We could almost have been in the Mediterranean.
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| Toby leading pitch 7 |
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| pitch 8 - the awesome slanting crack |
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| Toby on the summit |
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| Looking south to Henningvær - the beer is calling |
The climb took nine or ten hours. Little mentioned in the guidebook was the scale of the descent from the summit of Presten. The diary describes it as a "
horror". Helpfully the sun barely sets in Lofoten in early August so running out of light was not a concern. I remember interminable knife-edge ridge traverses before we could start heading down. According to the diary we made the bar by 11pm. The place was still busy at that time (it also doubles as a
climbing school) and I was struck by the disorientating timelessness of the Arctic summer. The rest of the world felt very distant. We knocked back cold beers there for at least a couple of hours before being collected by the Toni's.
Toby and I climbed some more things over the remainder of our stay including a possible first lead of a top-rope problem near the campground (later retro-claimed by a local) and a great multi-pitch slab frightener
Solens sønner. It was a brilliant week - one of my all-time favourite climbing trips. But Vestpillaren remained the highlight.
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| Solens Sønner - crux second pitch |
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| Solens Sønner - pitch 3 |
Subsequent ascents
Regrettably I have not been back to Lofoten.
