The weather was bad again this morning, this time light very strong winds and some rain at sea level. Clearly we would need to stay a little lower to avoid the strongest winds, but unfortunately withe the temperature in the valley hovering around 5 deg C good snow would only be found at higher levels. We opted to have a short day to make sure we’d be rested for Wednesday, which promised good weather (at least, according to yr.no). We elected to stay in the north, close to our cottage, and parked the car at 701595, on a small dirt track just off the coast road.
The potential target for the day was the 816m Russelvjellet. However just 10 minutes from the car we came across some ski tourers on their way down, who confirmed that it was indeed very windy higher up. The south west face of Russelvjellet looked univitingly bare and windswept, so we pushed further east towards Dalbruna. However even this proved to be rather too unpleasant, with wet wind whipping in from the sea to the south east, so at around 400m we stopped for tea and then dropped in to the cornice laden north west slope for a brief spell of rewarding skiing, and then back down through the porridge like snow to the car.
Back home in the cottage we consulted yr.no for the weather, and pored over our maps to decide what to do the following day. We’re all keen to ski around the highest mountain in the area, the 1834m Jiehkkevarri, and tomorrow seems a good day to do it, with the best weather of the week. With closer inspection it looks to be a monstrous tour, up to 16hours with over 2000m of climbing, due to the geography of the area. Worse, the usual route finishes on the other side of the range to the start, not ideal when you’re in just one car.
We decided to call a guide we’d been recommended by a couple of sources, a Swede named Jimmy who lives in Tromso. If tomorrow truly is the best day of the week, and from the looks of the forecast, possible on the only chance well get at a blue-sky day with the summit to sea views we came here for, perhaps we’ll be more likely to have a good time with a guide rather than without.
We’re meeting Jimmy tomorrow morning at 08:40 Svensby ferry…given that this is a good three hours earlier than our earliest start so far we need and early night tonight!