By Mathias
February 2019 / Mathias, John, Anders, Niklas / ***
Conditions had been solid under zero for 3-4 weeks and the promise of Undertaker being open for business had us arrange a Sunday trip to this beautiful place. It was just John and I but in a stroke of inspiration we invited Anders, a fellow ice monster, and he was on.
I managed to grab the converted rock mobile (XC90 4wd), and loaded with all of our gear we headed up towards Trollhætten, and the quarry where Undertaker resides. Last year we got stuck early on the forest road, and I was keen to get one back now that I had brought the big gun of XC90.
The road was covered in deep snow, but with a quick decision we headed up towards the quarry in 4wd off road mode. Pretty exciting drive and the car only just fitted the width of the road. The last bit of climb up and we made it to the base of the route. Excellent, exciting and festive start.
While I changed into proper ice climbing uniform, Anders and John headed over to the climb - now a short 3 min walk from the car.
And there she was the beauty of The Undertaker. Somehow a lot thinner than expected which puzzled us a bit, but with no dripping water sound - so nicely frozen.
Anders hadn’t climbed for a while, and on the drive up I was totally on for leading Undertaker, but turned a bit more humble as I saw the state of it all, and John was then again the obvious candidate. I politely declined the offer to take the lead and I knew John would be up for the challenge. I had recently experienced him on self-made link-ups between routes in Rjukan and he was clearly searching for challenges where he could find them.
So it was decided, I belayed John while Anders was occupied trying to find his dropped iPhone hiding somewhere in half a meter of snow with only 2 on the ring volume and a rapidly freezing battery.
John geared up - full rack on, and tick tock axes in, off we go. Brilliant to be climbing again and this close to Gothenburg. Ice climbing is gripping to watch as a belayer. You both have to watch out for falling ice and also watch the leader with long run outs and unpredictable ice. John was making good progress though a few concerned complaints was starting to drop down on the quality of the ice. I watched his ice screw placements as he drilled them in and it was clear even from below that the ice he was drilling into was mostly air as no deposit was exiting the screw hole. This was also the message he was giving us: "gear is pretty bad, I will go up a bit further but it may not go".
Anders had now found his phone and was joining me at the base happily chatting away on his exciting adventure of phone finding. I was trying to give silent support to John from below with the occasional "looking Good John!". John seemed to have reached a crux - where he needed to leave the relative safety and comfort of a bridge, to a commitment for a lengthy and sustained vertical section. "Wow, my phone still has 68 percent battery left", Anders chatted on. I was trying to be friendly and chat back but I was in a dilemma. I recently read on the Petzl website that when belaying you should pay attention to the person climbing and tell your surroundings that you are engaged in the important and involved activity of belaying. Thing is I was intrigued by the iPhone discovery and the amazing battery this iPhone seemed to have. My own iPhone is drained if I as much as think of using it and Anders clearly had something going here. I had to make a choice. I looked up at John, who was struggling finding solid hard ice for a proper "this will hold" ice screw placement but I had made my decision: John was fine, he seemed to be in his own world of ice zen. All I needed was to hold the rope so that we had something to climb on afterwards. I turned to Anders and while John was working the crux, chopping away on the ice, we shared phone stories until after a while John called "Saafe!" - he had reached the top.
Brilliant! It went free again and now it was our turn. Anders was clearly in the mood for surprises and thus announced that he had not brought his helmet. Ah, another classic. Thankfully Undertaker is only one (long) pitch and we quickly decided that I would climb it, lower down and then Anders could have my helmet.
The climb was excellent. I thought it was easier than last year and this is probably because of the easy removal of the ice screws and relativ easy going ice (though steep!). A luxury to be on the blunt end. John pulled in steadily and as I reached the top the ice steepened, the pump increased and ... then John started chatting... Was he somehow getting back on me for being a chatty belayer in his hours of need? It was fair. I was getting more pumped as I reached the lip of the ice fall and the ice started to run out. "Take tight John", I begged in a high pitched voice. But John just kept on chatting, and I realised that the unlikely thing had happened: A lonely ice climber had appeared from the woods above with the plan to top-rope-solo the Undertaker - an activity I myself had contemplated a few times over the last weeks. His name was Niclas and instead of leaving him there soloing on his own, we invited him to join our party and thus we all had a stab at Undertaker before we decided to move onwards to the other crag nearby: Nordkroken.
Less of a savage drive, but a lot more of a savage walk-in! Probably took an hour, through forest, over a lake and up to some rocks. John led the way, and he confirmed his status as a local ice aficionado and excellent leader of the pack.
Nordkroken was even thinner than Undertaker to the point where it clearly was not going to be able to be led safely. Weird we thought, this lack of ice, but we came up with the common agreement that it was probably because of the super dry summer that the feed to these falls simply wasn't there, they were missing water.
This was confirmed as I volunteered to lead up the "classic W3 of the crag" which would lead us up to the top and enable us to rig a top rope on the more interesting though thinner ice next to it. The W3 was more like a M3, M for mud and mankyness. Classic nasty business with no ice, not frozen grass, just loose pillars of rock, mud, earth and general forest mank. Thankfully there were two small trees in the gully that I could sling for protection on the way so I was pretty certain it would go. It did and Anders joined me and we eventually rigged the top rope for the others on the route next to us. By the time we were all ready to climb (on top rope) it was getting dark and of course I had forgotten my headtorch in the car, and Anders and Niclas didn't have one either. So we had John's. We stayed regardless and enjoyed watching eachothers silly attempts on climbing some really thin and dodgy ice. Lots of the curtains fell down and I was glad no-one had decided to be on the sharp end of that stuff.
Eventually Anders reached the top of the climb in complete darkness, derigged and joined us at the base, ready for the long and dark walk-out to the car. It was a nice finish to an excellent Sunday.