The weather looked a bit suspect so we opted for another easy crag day at Pianokrakken. I climbed Applecake Arete and Lys og skygge with Will and then Ross put a great effort in to lead the photogenic route Tapir.
Roadside cragging in Lofoten means solid, multi-pitch granite cracks overlooking glistening blue seas in the sunshine. Ross and I tried to tick all of the Top 50 routes at the crag in a day, failing only because we missed out the route of Gandalf itself. Another day of amazing trad climbing in Arctic Norway.
Tucked away above the little town of Svolvær is the Napes Needle of Lofoten (although it is considerably more impressive than its Wasdale equivalent). The famous twin ears at the top have an infamous jump between them, which none of us fancied. The pillar was first ascended in 1910 which is pretty remarkable and we climbed both the original 1910 route and the more exciting 5-pitch Forsida.
Team ascent of Bare Blåbær, pronounced in English as "bleur bleurbleur". "Only Bilberries" is a Norwegian expression meaning an easy task, and the hardest part of the day for Clay and Ross was finding the route itself..
Our first trip onto the granite of Lofoten after catching the afternoon ferry across from Bodø the night before. A couple of routes to warm up and then I got hauled up Svenske Diedret behind Ross, the first of many Top 50 routes for the week!
Relocating to the Fuente De end of the Picos de Europa, we thought that an ascent of Espolón de los Franceses on Penya Vieja would make a great end to our week in Spain. After some early route finding issues on the complex SE face of the mountain we eventually hit the ridgeline and the route got better and better as we cruised towards the top.
With seven hours of climbing gone we could have been forgiven for thinking we were nearly finished, but the route ends with a further two hours of complicated, exposed and occasionally terrifying ridgeline including three abseils and a number of wet snow patches. Running out of time we soloed across the rocky mess to summit at 9:30pm and dashed down the avalanche prone slopes to the bottom, finishing the 2km vertical of descent shortly after midnight.
