Reykjavík Grapevine - 01.03.2013, Blaðsíða 23

23 TRAVEL
ÞÓRSHÖFN
VOPNAFJÖRÐUR
THORSHOFN
ILULISSAT
ITTOQQORTOORMIIT
NUUK
KULUSUK
NARSARSUAQ
GRÍMSEY
ÍSAFJÖRÐUR
AKUREYRI
EGILSSTAÐIR
REYKJAVÍK
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highly seductive offers to all our destinations
iceland, greenland or the faroe islands
airiceland.is
Perfect spring corn on virtually every run,
panoramas straight out of the Icelandic Sagas,
excellent company and some of the finest
guiding I’ve ever experienced—I’m onto a win-
ner before we even throw into the equation
the helicopter that would whisk us around the
peaks of North Iceland’s Troll Peninsula.
Whilst the region is often buried under
vast quantities of light fluffy snow, I was here
in mid-May when you can more realistically
expect to find the kind of excellent spring
skiing conditions I encountered every day. If
you want powder you need to visit in March
or April when it’s colder, but I wasn’t unduly
concerned about its scarcity because in place
of powder I got to slice through perfect corn
snow for up to almost 1000 metres at a time.
That alone would have been good enough,
but it gets better. The top pitches of those runs
were often down steep couloirs with angles of
40–45 degrees. If that sounds tame, take the
average black run in a ski resort and then add
another ten degrees to the pitch of the slope.
You don’t often get to ski slopes this steep
on heliskiing trips for the simple reason that
soft, light powder is likely to avalanche at
such angles, but that was not the case with
Iceland’s stable maritime snowpack. This
meant scores of excitingly steep runs
down the butter-smooth, wet ‘corn
snow’ that covers the peaks of the
Troll Peninsula.
Several of our headlong swoops
towards the North Atlantic were
first descents down terrain that
had never before been skied. If that
doesn’t qualify your average skier for
ski hero status for at least a few minutes,
I really don’t know what does.
THE MOST EPIC SKIING
I was skiing with Jökull Bergmann, Iceland’s
only internationally qualified mountain guide
and the dude who set up Arctic Heliskiing on
the Troll Peninsula where his ancestors have
lived for over 1,000 years.
The edifying result of this for his clients is
some of the finest skiing you’re ever likely to
experience, apparently with no more effort
than falling down a 45 degree couloir (and that
really is easy, take my word for it).
This sense of comfort in and familiarity
with northern Iceland’s harsh and potentially
unforgiving environment only comes about af-
ter decades of experience and respect for that
environment, which JB clearly has.
JB’s choice of descents, along with some
magnificent helicopter flying by pilot Snorri
Steingrímsson, means that each day’s skiing is
a seamless flow of one epic run after another,
interspersed by exciting pick-ups and drop-
offs and short breaks before each descent
to take in the giant, fantastical landscapes
around us.
Our base was at Klængshóll, the farm
owned by JB’s family at the head of Skíðada-
lur valley, above which Arctic Heli Skiing’s
guests get their first taste of skiing—a short
five minute flight away. Staying at Klængshóll
is like staying with your best mate for the
weekend—drop in, crack open an (expensive)
beer, put your feet up and flop down in front
of the TV.
And that’s exactly what you feel like doing
after a hard day’s heliskiing. But if you think
that’s tough work, you should try ski touring,
another one of JB’s operations.
Ski touring involves attaching ‘skins’ to the
base of your skis which allow them to slide
forward but not backwards (you remove them
when you eventually want to go downhill),
and with the help of ski bindings, which have
detachable heels, you can ‘walk’ uphill—usu-
ally for hours at a time to get to the summit of
Iceland’s mighty peaks. It’s hard
work, but the views, and
the chance to explore
isolated, untouched
mountains make the effort more than worth-
while.
JB invites me back to North Iceland the
following spring to give it a go. We’re access-
ing the peaks via a 60-foot, two-masted oak
schooner and skinning up every slope we ski.
On the second day of my adventure here our
schooner ‘Hildur’ anchors in Rauðavík Bay be-
fore we take the tender ashore to climb 1,129
metre Skálavíkurhnjúkur on the Í Fjörðum
region of the country’s north coast.
ELEMENTAL LANDSCAPES
Iceland lends itself well to a trip like this where
you use a boat as your base from which to
ski. And a boat is by far the best way to ac-
cess Í Fjörðum, a perpetually snow-capped
landscape of mountains and moorlands that
is virtually inaccessible by vehicle outside of
summer and which has no settlements other
than an occasional remote, abandoned farm-
house or an equally remote ‘summerhouse’
here and there along the shoreline.
Our days followed a regular pattern. Rise
to bright sunlight glinting on the still waters of
whichever bay we’d anchored in for the night,
down a huge breakfast and then head ashore
and start the hard work of climbing to our
chosen summit.
One day I stood atop a mountain on my
skis and looked down on the ocean, the small
dot of Flatey Island just offshore, further north
the outline of Grímsey Island through which
passes the Arctic Circle (and which we’d later
sail to, just to say we’d been to the Arctic) and
beyond that, pretty much nothing? Few people
had ever stood upon this summit, particularly
in wintertime and I feel privileged to be there.
Every time we stopped for a breather we
were greeted by views of elemental sub-Arctic
landscapes—sky, snow, sea, mountains—it’s
about as primal and as glorious as it can get
and more than repays the effort. Most of the
mountains that stand guard along this stretch
of Iceland’s north coast top out at around
1000-metres, which means you’ve earned a
descent as long as the biggest runs in most
decent sized ski resorts when you eventually
head back down.
But unlike most ski resorts this descent will
be with just a handful of friends on untracked
spring snow, with no sign of humankind to be
seen anywhere—effectively you’ve got your
own private mountain to ski down.
Whether it made me feel more worthy than
the ‘easy’ option of heliskiing I can’t really say,
but I know I’d go back and do either any time.
The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 3 — 2013
“
„
If that sounds tame, take
the average black run in a
ski resort and then add an-
other ten degrees to the pitch
of the slope.