Hans, Angus, Sheila and I ascended Store Lakeselvtindane.
The access to which is via the Thomas Couloir, a long, steep but very wide couloir that runs up to the top of a small glacier below the central couloir of Lakselvtindane.
From there, we ascended the Central couloir, which is a steep south facing couloir that goes straight to the summit of the mountain.
We left the descent of the summit a little late and the couloir started to harden up. Some skiing was obtained before we resorted to down climbing the crux. All up we had five pitches of 30m (60m doubled) – two with snow stakes as anchors and three with webbing around rock outcrops.
Once we all had safely descended the Central Couloir, we still had 1200 vertical metres of skiing down the Thomas Couloir back to the car. This was some of the better skiing of the day, despite there being lots of tracks through the couloir.
It was a very long day, over 11 hours. However, a large chunk of that was safely managing the descent of the Central Couloir. Great experience of more technical ski mountaineering.
