Ice climbing in Iceland
Spring 95
My name is Olli Thorsson (olli@pharmaco.is)
and I live in Iceland. I live in the capital
city Reykjavik and not many people know how many great ice climbing
sites there are around here. Our grading is may be different from
yours. We have, for example, one gorge 35min drive from Reykjavik
where you can get 190m (620ft) of vertical ice cliffs (86-90 degrees).
In this gourge there are many potential grade 6 technical climbing
routes but nobody has been crazy enough to try them. In stead we have
been climbing the grade 5 climbs first before we try the harder ones.
I can send you some pictures if you are interested but this is just
one of many ice climbing sites situated less than an hour drive from
Reykjavik. Some of us climb 2-3 times a week and sometimes we climb
during the night in the dark. That is a lot of fun and quite different
from a day time climb. The temperature is usually just around 32F and
it rarely gets very cold over here. On the other hand we can expect
any kind of weather but it is OK because we are never very far from
our car. We are now currently making a home page for the Icelandic
Alpine club. Most of the climbers here are members of the Icelandic
Alpine club. We are interrested in promoting ice climbing in Iceland
not for tourists but for dedicated climbers. We like to climb with
good climbers, not tourists. We are currently discovering a new
climbing site in the north cost of Iceland where there are potential
30-50 routes 130-180m long. Most of these routes are vertical or near
vertical from the bottom to the top. We have only done about 8 routes
there now so most of it is unclimbed. This site is a great one since
you can almost drive under them (5-10min walking from car). Ice
climbing is very young sport in Iceland so there are a lot of sites
like this to be discovered. If you want more infos. e-mail
me.
Spring 98
I just wanted to write this e-mail to thank you for the tremendous help
you have done to promote ice climbing in Iceland. You might be very
surprised to hear this but the strory is following. Two or three years
ago I sent you an e-mail about ice climbing in Iceland and didn't think
of putting in on the web. You however put it on your homepage(Ice
climbing in Iceland). From there Dougald MacDonald from Rock & Ice
picked it up and contacted me about making an article on ice climbing in
Iceland. They were here February last year Dougald and Bill Hatcher. The
article about ice climbing in Iceland appeared in the Jan-Feb issue of
R&I and from there the ball really started to roll. Since January there
have been quite a few ice climbers coming here: Jeff Lowe, Guy Lacelle,
Jay Smith, Kitty Calhoun, Manu Ibarra(French), Christophe Moulin(French
with the Grivel team), Will Gadd, and more.
Before this January Iceland was sporting one M6+ route as it's hardest
route. Now it is different: there have been done 6-8 M6-M6+ routes three
M7 routes one WI6 and one WI6+ route along with M8+ route Will Gadd did
and one route he did and refuses to grade but simply says: It is by far
the hardest route I have ever done in my life. From January there have
been between 50-60 first ascents done here despite the fact that this
has been the worst winter for ice climbing in years. All this has put
Iceland on the map so to speak.
See
THE WORLD'S HARDEST ROUTE. BY WILL GADD.