Entropi on Mt. Blokktind in Norway climbed by Juho Knuuttila, Eivind Jacobsen

A few years ago I discovered a mountain called Blokktind (1035m) on a map, located on the shores of Tjongsfjord, three hours drive south of the city Bodø. Initially I thought that its steep NW face would be a cool summer objective, but after noticing a black and wet stripe running down the face in some of the pictures, I realised that there could be some ice in winter. It turned out to be one of the most beautiful winter lines I have seen in northern Norway. One of those lines you just can’t get out of your mind.

As I moved to Narvik for winter, I was way more flexible to give it a go. One of the locals was kind enough to send condition updates as she can see the face every day from her home. Conditions seemed to get better week by week and finally in early March it was time to give it a go before spring temps would melt it.

I had only two days off from work last week and I reckoned the next polar low pressure system would probably destroy the ice on Saturday. Luckily Eivind Jacobsen, a strong skier and climber currently based in Bodø, was keen to join. On Thursday evening I drove 5 hours to Bodø to pick up Eivind before we continued another 3 hours to the village of Tjong located close to the mountain.

After a two hour approach on supporting spring snow and across frozen Lake Blokkvatnet on Friday morning, we stood base of the line. It looked much thinner than we thought. To reach the ice we needed to climb a ramp system that provided some enjoyable turf climbing. Not too steep, and good blobs of turf. Lots of spindrift was already coming down the face.

Once on the ice we quickly thought about bailing. The next pitch seemed to have a vertical section of already delaminated ice which appeared impossible to climb. I climbed higher though to have a look if there would be a weakness to skip it. And there was! A very steep slanting feature of turf and slopey rock. It took me three tries to commit as I wasn’t happy with my beta.
I always climbed down to gather myself before I finally went for it, emptying my mind from negative thoughts as the protection was horrible. I climbed bare handed, using some crimps and then turf for ice tools. The terrain was steep and technical.

Once at the belay I crashed out due to mental exhaustion, but didn’t have too much time to recover for the next vertical pitch of 5 cm ice. Eivind had started his winter climbing season only a few weeks earlier, so I offered to lead. Luckily the temperature was above zero, which made for soft ice. Fragile ice would have been too much, but still the mental exhaustion started to build up.

The sixth pitch of easier terrain led to a crack which I also climbed bare handed, throwing in hand and finger jams while still wearing crampons. When it got icy, I changed to dry tooling and finally did one wild reach to get back to the ice.

Pitch number eight climbed a 65m meter vertical ice vein through the headwall. Now it was possible to place screws again! The position was exposed and with a ever-increasing spindrift it was a real battle to climb up. Until this point every pitch had been a victory and kind of a surprise that they had gone free.

After so much tricky climbing, the last two pitches of normal grade five ice felt a bit more relaxed as the evening got darker. We still had 250m of snow slopes though to reach the summit. Conditions were safe for simul soloing but the wind had picked up and on the summit it was already so strong that it was better to stay in a low position. Visibility was quite bad due to flying ice particles in the air and that made down-climbing the south ridge very slow since we needed to continuously check our location via GPS.

We reached the car after 16 and half hours on the go. It was already raining and our weather window for the route came to its end. Now we needed to drive back to Bodø from where I continued through the night to Narvik to get to the work next morning.

The climb was a full-on adventure and it’s hard to imagine finding a more beautiful line up here any time soon. I’m feeling quite empty now and it might take a while to process this and probably even longer to recover mentally. Definitely one of the most challenging climbs I have ever done.

Entropi (Norwegian) or Entropy in English is explained like this: lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder. It describes the line well but climbing went in a opposite direction from total disorder, also mentally, to total order. The name might have something to do with the situation in the world at the moment too…

The entire route was climbed onsight. We encountered difficulties up to WI5+, M6, N5, R and we didn’t leave any gear behind. N5 equals to French 5b.

by Juho Knuuttila

Juho is sponsored by Petzl, Rab, Lowa, Gloryfy and Lowe Alpine
Link: www.juhoknuuttila.com