It was a cold crisp morning with unbroken blue sky and sunshine. Over breakfast we made a quick change of plans and decided to try our “Haus Berg”, the closest mountain to our Air BnB. It’s not so often that you can do a ski tour without requiring a vehicle, and skinning from your house door to the bottom of the mountain is something quite different. It’s certainly not possible to ski tour like this in NZ! We skinned through fresh powder for a few hundred metres before hanging a left and beginning our ascent through small and sparse birch trees. Johannes D went in front and ploughed steep tracks in the snow. We kick turned our way up through the trees leaving them entirely after a few hundred metres.

Skinning up through the trees (Day 2, Sørfjelltinden, Ski Touring Lyngen 2023)
We set off for Sørfjelltinden, skiing directly from our accommodation.
Going up (Day 2, Sørfjelltinden, Ski Touring Lyngen 2023)
We took a fairly straight line up the mountain.
Four towards the summit (Day 2, Sørfjelltinden, Ski Touring Lyngen 2023)
We continued up. It was steep on both the right and left sides but the ridge was broad and flat.

The next few hours were spent slowly ascending. Clouds formed on the horizon, blocking the sun briefly but then they vanished again and there was just blue and white. The last section was across a large plateau to the summit.

 

We swapped into downhill mode and began skiing back down. We were the first group to ascend and the faces were free from tracks. Johannes D went first and skied all the way down to the tree line. The rest of us took it much more slowly, stopping regularly. The snow was very good and we carved wide turns into the mountain, skiing one by one down the steeper sections to keep the avalanche gods happy.

Cris with Johannes and Kristian behind (Day 2, Sørfjelltinden, Ski Touring Lyngen 2023)
Looking down behind me you can see the valley where our accommodation is.
At the top of Sørfjelltinden (Day 2, Sørfjelltinden, Ski Touring Lyngen 2023)
We stopped more or less at the summit and got ready fro the descent. There may have been a good review from the edge of the plateau but we didn’t go that far to see.
Back down across the plateau (Day 2, Sørfjelltinden, Ski Touring Lyngen 2023)
We skied back down across the plateau.

 

We met Johannes D on his way back up to look for us. The others continued down and him and I went up for a second lap. He went ahead while I got my skins on and I saw him again as he descended from the summit. We had another nice descent and then followed some tracks from a split boarder that went out to the right. We sidled around the mountain and down to the tree line. The snow was even lighter and fluffier there and we had a magic descent through the trees. It felt artistic, painting flowing turns down through the trees. It was probably the nicest descent of the day despite the rest also being excellent.

 

At the bottom we got our skins back out and skinned back next to the road to our accommodation.

 

Johannes D skis down towards the fiord (Day 2, Sørfjelltinden, Ski Touring Lyngen 2023)
We finished off the day by descending further to the right where we found beautiful powder snow. It was so light. Skiing it felt like you were creating art. Granted it probably wasn’t fine art in my case.

 

Sørfjelltinden

Moving time: 4:17:29 Distance: 18.22 km  Ascent: 2,291 m

https://www.strava.com/activities/8708086767

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Lyngen 2023-2 Sørfjelltinden
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