A very productive time in norway ice climbing and photographing with Colin , Adam and Ben . we were back in Rjukan , a industrial ghost town with not much going for it apart from the outstanding quality of ice climbing to be had there….. normally . But , this year was unlike any other year . A late start to the season had resulted in some of the classic lines not forming and last weeks warm temperatures of above freezing had seen some of the most reliable lines in the upper gorge getting stage fright and not showing .
we set the scene on the first day of arrival by doing some roadside ice cragging by the light of the car headlamps . I also used some off camera flash triggered by the pocket wizards and Adam doing a sterling job on boom arm duty to get some light high up the ice . The Vemork museum also adds a slightly surreal feeling appearing to be suspended in space .
Kong vinter , a venue i hadn’t visited before was in great shape though , as was its beast ‘King Kong ‘ . Its an abseil descent into a deep bowl surrounded by very steep ice and the only way out is up . adam and i did a WI4 and colin and ben warmed up on a WI4 before the main attraction’King kong.
this is a big tick and one that Colin was ready to bed , so , with picks sharpened, he set about sending the route in smooth style. I set up an abseil rope over the lip of the route and shot with the 70-200. there were some stunning lines of some icicles to my left that i used as lead in lines to the main action . The man is part machine and after doing this very sustained WI 5 we headed off for krokan to do a M7WI5 by twilight . More OCF was used , shooting in manual mode .
My favourite shot is the icicles shot with the climbers , Elisha likes the starlight climbing shot , Jared the steep shot of King Kong and Judith likes them all , Ah , isn’t that nice .