Klemmartinden (28.03.2014)  

This weekend I was taking part in a skredworkshop in Malangen with the fjellsportgruppa. While not everyone was able to leave early on the friday, some of us did and chose to take the opportunity to go on a ski trip. We met up on a rainy friday lunchtime at ICA Langnes and organised car driving etc. A little over half of the group set course for Trollholtindan while the remaining 6 of us would make an attempt on Klemmartindan. In our rather small group were myself, Renate, Aslak, Lars and two of the instructors Svein and Yngve.

Fortunately the rain stopped while we drove to Malangen but the temperature was insanely warm, I think it was 6 or 7 degrees when we left the cars at Slåttvika! Unsurprisingly there was a fair amount of sugeføre in the lower part of the forest, not something I was particularly looking forward to skiing back down.

So up we went, first going up to the saddle between Rundhaugen and Ryphaugen, and then up towards Reindaløya. We took a late lunch stop before coming out of the forest. After that we continued up towards the ridge connecting Klemmartindan and Grønfjellet, and the snow here was surprisingly nice, but once we reached the top of Grønfjellet it was more or less only icy snow, zero visibility and a fair amount of wind.

The majority of the group voted for turning here since not all of us had packed skarejern, and we discussed that poor visibility wasn't particularly useful in evaluating route choice in relation to avalanche hazard. So here we took of skins and got ready to ski down.

The first part of the ski back down to the treeline was very good. Not powder, but just good snow with only the odd bit of sastrugi thrown in here and there. From the treeline back down to the road again we got a mixture of heavy, wet snow and some half-decent stuff. Can't admit to particularly enjoying the forest. To say the trees were a little tightly-spaced would (in my opinion) be a bit of an understatement. Anyway, fortunately I managed to avoid any falls, but it took a little while longer than those who have a better skiing relationship with forest!