02 · The Lyngen Alps · Arctic Norway
Ullstinden Ice Week
Seven days of glacier travel, crevasse rescue and roped movement on the Ullstinden ice, taught properly — and the only way into the harder routes if you have not been on a rope before.
- Duration
- 7 days
- Party
- 6 to 8
- Season
- March to mid May
- From, per person
- €4,200
The route
- Tromsø
- Kvaløya
- Ullstinden
- Blåisvatnet
- Tromsø
This is the week that most of our travellers do first, and about a fifth of them do it because we told them to after reading their enquiry. It is not a soft introduction to the Arctic. It is a technical course with an expedition attached to the end of it, and people finish it tired.
Why we run a course at all
Because the alternative is guiding people who cannot look after themselves, and on a glacier in Greenland that is not a service, it is a liability we would be selling you. Every harder route in the catalogue lists a prerequisite. This week satisfies most of them.
Day four
You go into a crevasse. It is a real crevasse on the Ullstinden ice that we have used since 2016, with three independent anchors above it and Marit on the edge, and you prusik out of it under your own power while your party builds the haul you did not need.
Nobody enjoys the first ten seconds. Everybody, afterwards, says it was the day that made the week worth the money. It is also the day that tells us more about a person than the other six put together.
What this week is not
It is not a summit trip. Day six has an objective and we often do not reach it, because the party is running it and the party makes the call. That is the point.
It is also not a qualification anyone else recognises. It is our assessment, for our routes. If you want a portable certificate, do a Skredkurs as well — we will tell you who runs the good ones, and one of them is not us.
Day by day
The shape of it
Day 1
Sjøgata yard
Kit on the floor, knots on the table. Figure-eight, clove hitch, prusik, munter. You will tie all four blindfolded before dinner, because on day four you will be doing it in a glove.
Days 2–3
Kvaløya
Two days on short slopes: skinning technique, kick turns on steep ground, transceiver searches until everyone is under four minutes on a two-burial grid.
Day 4
Ullstinden ice
The crevasse day. You go in the hole. Everyone goes in the hole — it is a hole we have chosen, with three anchors on it, but you go in and you get yourself out.
Day 5
Ullstinden ice
Roped glacier travel, all day, in a party of three. Spacing, coils, arrest. Marit will fall over without warning roughly once an hour.
Day 6
Blåisvatnet
One real objective, run by the party rather than by the guide. We follow and say nothing unless it matters.
Day 7
Tromsø
Debrief with a written assessment. It says what you can book next and, sometimes, what you cannot yet.
Before you book, and what to bring
Before you book
What this route asks of you
- Able to ski a red run in control, in variable snow, with a pack on
- A basic level of fitness: 800 metres of ascent, several days running
- No rope experience required — this is the week that gives you it
On the yard floor
Kit you supply, and we check
- Touring skis, boots and skins (rental available in Tromsø, arranged by us)
- A harness that fits over shell trousers, and a helmet
- Gloves you can tie a knot in, and a second pair you cannot
- A head torch, because day four sometimes finishes in the dark
What the price covers
Included
What €4,200 buys
- Six nights in Tromsø and two at the Ullstinden hut
- Marit Haugen and a second instructor all week — never more than four to one
- All technical group kit: ropes, screws, pulleys, anchors, the works
- Every meal except two evenings in town, which you will want
- The written assessment, and it is honest
Not included
And, pointedly, what it does not
- Flights to Tromsø
- Ski, boot and skin rental if you do not own them (we book it, you pay it)
- Rescue insurance, required
- A pass to the harder routes. This week earns it or it does not.