Overview

A week of ice climbing in the Gudbrandsdalen and Espedalen valleys North of Lillehammer in Norway. We started running trips here in 2024 and it’s an awesome place for ice climbing adventures, with unique, incredible venues. The area offers a range of grades and styles with everything from accessible single pitch crags, to long multipitch routes in wild locations.

We’ve found the Lillehammer area is similar to Rjukan in that it caters well to different experience levels from those starting out (we can provide all the technical equipment), to more experienced folk wanting guiding on big adventures, and even those keen to learn the skills to lead ice themselves. The area is more spread out than Rjukan and a bit quieter. With a low instructor ratio of 1:2 our expert instructors will get the most out of your time in Norway whether it’s instruction or guiding you’re after.

The ice season is far more reliable here than back home in Scotland, and combined with the short walk-ins it’s an ideal place to actually learn & be coached in technique without being battered by storm conditions. These weeks can be a great primer for the Scottish Winter season helping increase confidence climbing on the consistent, solid, steeper Norwegian ice and are epic in the best sense of the word!

Lillehammer Ice Climbing Trip Aims

By the end of this trip you’ll;

  • Have climbed loads of quality ice.
  • Developed your ice climbing technique.
  • Have some amazing adventures. Climbing ice beneath a towering 40m dam, climbing in a frozen over hell at Helvete, long beautiful multi pitches straight above the road or tucked away in secluded valleys.

Gallery

Course Details

Whilst we can cater for all levels from beginner to more experienced climbers looking to lead climb or be guided up tougher routes, it’s useful to have some climbing and winter experience before joining this trip.

Climbing Skills – being competent in lead belaying, and having experience of seconding routes outdoors means you can hit the ground running and focus on adapting to the winter environment; doing everything in gloves and dealing with ice screws. Our Rock Skills Intermediate course is ideal for people looking to develop summer climbing skills.

Winter Skills – it’s useful to have a little experience in UK winter conditions, walking with ice & crampons and dialling in clothing systems. A bit of Scottish Winter climbing experience is also great prep and certainly builds appreciation for the convenience and reliability on offer when ice climbing in Norway!

A 1:2 ratio & planned rest day allows for adaptability, below is the format for the week.

Travel Out

Day 1

Fly - fly into Olso Gardemoen airport which is well served by UK airports.

Drive to accommodation - we'll meet in the airport, grab the hire car and drive North for around 2.5hrs.

Food Shopping - depending on time we'll do a food shop for the week en-route.

Evening Brief - meet your instructor team, we'll chat about safety for the week, your aspirations, check equipment and come up with a plan for the next day.

Ice Climbing

Day 2

Our first day climbing. Guided by your experience levels & your instructor. Typically a cragging style venue to focus on technique and coach movement skills in a friendly environment to get into the swing of things.

Ice Climbing

Day 3

Very much tailored to your needs. This could be climbing harder routes, an adventurous multipitch route or developing the skills for leading on ice.

Ice Climbing

Day 4

Go big! Typically with a rest day to follow this'll be a bigger objective kind of day!

Rest Day

Day 5

A rest day for you & your instructor! This may move a day either side for flexibility with weather/climbing conditions.

There's plenty of active stuff to do if you still have energy such as skiing at KvitFjell, or making use of the snowshoes we have to go for a walk locally. Equally there's some nice cafes to tour and gear shops to peruse to recharge for the final days climbing.

Ice Climbing

Day 6

Recharged after a rest day it's back to climbing amazing ice routes and visiting more of the unique venues on offer here in the region.

Ice Climbing

Day 7

Final Day Climbing - we'll bag one more memorable day of climbing in this stunning area. A culmination of the trip, for those learning the skills to lead this is typically where you'll get on the sharp end!

Evening Meal - optionally we often head out for a celebratory final meal out to cap the week and recount adventure stories.

Pack - typically it's an early drive the following morning, so bags packed ready for an alpine start.

Travel Home

Day 8

Drive to Airport - roughly a 2.5hr drive back South to Oslo Gardemoen

Flight Home - flights home.

Or...... - for those who can afford the additional time off why not bolt on a few more days travel to the end of the trip to explore Oslo or a few days skiing? Or even join us for another week of ice climbing in Rjukan?





Lillehammer Ice Climbing Area


Guidebook Area – the guidebook for the area is titled Lillehammer, but most of the climbing lies further to the North of Lillehammer along the Gudbrandsdalen valley and round in the Espedalen valley and fairly widespread.

Accommodation – our experience in the area helps us to select an ideal base to balance drive times to the various crags. Drive times can be up to an hour for some of the outlying crags, though this is balanced by the short walk-ins! Some crags are practically on the doorstep!

Venues – there are some amazing ice venues here. Check out the gallery for pictures of Vinkelfossen where there are super long pitches of ice up the side of a 40m dam. “Helvete” translates in Norwegian as “Hell” and is a stunning deep cut gorge with ice dripping everywhere. Sorstulen is the abseil photo (showing only 1 pitch!), stunning 200m multipitch routes in a narrow gorge that hosts world class climbing at surprisingly amenable grades. The photo clearly shows the 3 different routes increasing in difficulty from left to right of Lettis (WI3+), Godis (WI4) and Hardis (WI5).

We love running these trips, our philosophy is to price them as to pay fair rates to instructors and their travel costs, alongside the additional admin in organising the trip, flying out group kit like snowshoes, ice axes etc. We don’t offer a flat, all-inclusive fee – we’re not in the business of profiteering from taking a margin on accommodation or hire car bookings. As such these costs aren’t fixed beforehand, but does mean you’ll pay the going rate and no upcharge. The sooner flights and car hire are booked, the cheaper these costs typically are.

The costs here include –
  • Your AMI qualified and experienced instructor’s time at a 1:2 ratio for 5 days of instruction split across the 8 day trip and their travel out.
  • The loan of any equipment, and use of the instructor’s kit for the trip.
  • The logistical support of us organising the trip for the team.
The costs do not include –
  • Flights – you’ll be responsible for booking your own flights to Oslo Gardermoen airport. Budget around £150-£200.
  • Car hire – we’ll hire one vehicle for each team split between the 2 clients, and take out a separate excess premium. A medium/large car is preferable for stability driving on snow. Budget around £100-150 each.
  • Fuel and Tolls – fuel is paid by clients whilst out in Norway. Tolls are tallied automatically and paid by clients on return to the UK. As a guide, our last 2 trips average total costs for fuel were £50 each & tolls £20 each.
  • Accommodation – is split by the clients. We typically find somewhere basic and self-catered but with a bit of space for kit. This is where as a group it often works out cheaper staying somewhere as a larger team. Typically we’ll book this a few months before the trip once numbers are firmed up. The cost is more variable as it really depends on what’s available for our group numbers. Budget between £175 – £300 each.
  • Food – food is split evenly between everyone. We’ll stay in self-catered accommodation and the plan is to cook as a group. Food is a bit more expensive than in the UK, but we’ll cook basic hearty evening meals. Bringing your own snack bars from the UK helps to keep costs down a bit. We often head out for a final evening meal but this is optional.
  • Insurance – clients should take out travel insurance that covers ice climbing as an activity. The BMC, Snowcard and Dogtag are all companies that offer policies. Budget around £80-£100.

There are a few outfits running trips to Norway ice climbing destinations, so why book with us?

Experience – all trips are run by myself, Stu Lade. I’ve worked a couple of full seasons in Norway based out of Rjukan, and have worked on numerous ice climbing trips to Norway for other companies over the years, as well as many winters instructing in Scotland. I carefully select the other instructors who work alongside me on these trips such that as well as being suitably qualified (WMCI) and professional (AMI members), that they also have suitable experience working in these environments and teaching / guiding ice climbing at a high level. I’ve also worked on 2 trips specifically to this climbing area.

Snowshoes – we have invested in multiple sets of snowshoes for these trips which are part of the package at no extra cost. Whilst they’re not always required, on the days they are it makes a huge difference! It means it’s possible to walk-in to some of the more remote venues even under heavy snow. The snow shoes can also be used by clients on the planned rest day free of charge.

Spare Kit – hopefully no-one experiences a kit failure, or loses anything important, but we carry a spare pair of ice axes and crampons just in case, and a well stocked repair kit. For a trip like this it would be extremely annoying to miss out on climbing due to kit mishaps!

Individual Bookings – to run at these costs we require 2 clients per instructor similar to many companies, though for an increased fee we can run at 1:1. We do often play matchmaker pairing folk up on our open courses to make it happen and the same goes for these trips. We find roughly half of clients book as pairs and half book as individuals which we then match up. If you book as an individual we recommend holding off booking flights and such until we can confirm we have another booking to partner you with. In these instances booking refundable flights can be worthwhile.

Trip Length – we run our trip over 8 days with 5 days climbing and 1 rest day whereas some do 7 days overall with 4 days climbing and 1 rest day. We like to maximise the length of the trip for the travel cost, both in terms of time and carbon; and we find most folk are pretty tired after 5 days of climbing and ready for a break by the end of a trip. It also makes the work more appealing so we can attract the best instructors, being able to offer 5 days of paid work over an 8 day period vs 4 days over a 7 day period.

We provide a detailed kit list for each of our courses so you know exactly what kit you’ll need and what we’ll provide. We appreciate outdoor kit can be pretty pricey so we’ll advise where is best to spend your money and what kit we really rate. We can provide all the group rigging kit on this course such as static ropes for rigging.
Download the Kit List
We have also set up a 15% discount for Mountain Independence clients with V12 Outdoors. They are our favorite climbing shop with an amazing range of kit, super friendly and knowledgeable staff and they’re very local – exactly 100m from our door in Llanberis!
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Kit List – Lillehammer Ice Climbing WeekKit List – Lillehammer Ice Climbing Week

FAQs

General FAQs

For more generalised questions please visit our FAQs page or for questions specifically relating to the Lillehammer Ice Climbing Week course see below.

Lillehammer Ice Climbing Week FAQs

We run these trips in Norway and on the dates offered to give the absolute best chance of good climbing conditions based on our experience and historical data. Norway is know as one of the more reliable places in Europe to find consistently good quality ice climbing. Despite this, conditions vary year to year. Out experienced instructors will help make the most of whatever conditions we encounter safely using our experience of the area.

If conditions are looking exceptionally poor as to make any ice climbing unfeasible, we will have a conversation with all clients booked on the trip about potential cancellation though this is extremely rare.

Unfortunately we don't accept under-18s on our open courses. We would consider mature (17, possibly 16 year olds) with suitable experience that would be teamed with their immediate guardian throughout the trip. Please discuss with us on a case by case basis.

Ice climbing is hard! But it is also quite different to the strengths required from Rock Climbing. As every hold is a jug (ergonomic ice axe handles!) finger strength is less of an issue, than overall endurance and shoulder strength to maintain stability swinging ice tools repeatedly. Regular climbers typically have ample fitness for ice climbing. If fitness/strength is something that is of concern we are more than happy to suggest some specific exercises and training plans to best prepare you for the trip.

Climbing is often perceived to be a high risk activity. We expect people joining this course to be competent climbers and to take responsibility for their own safety in line with the British mountaineering Council's Participation Statement. Winter climbing does have additional risks to summer climbing, including but not limited to increased objective dangers from ice fall and multiple sharp things attached to yours and others bodies.

You can be assured we'll manage that risk using only suitably Qualified and Professional Staff, as well as taking Safety seriously.

These trips are greater commitments for us and our instructors to run being overseas. As such we have a different cancellation policy in place. We're not in the business of profiteering from people's misfortune, but we need to balance not increasing costs to other clients or letting down instructors who have made a commitment to work. We recommend a travel insurance policy that provides for cancellation losses.

Up to 6 months (24 weeks) - you may cancel in full, less any Paypal fees incurred.

Up to 3 months (12 weeks) - refund less the deposit amount. As the trip gets closer we have to start firming up instructors, booking their flights, car hire etc.

Less than 3 months (12 weeks) - we will refund amounts on a case by base basis depending on the refund policies of accommodation booked, flights, instructor cancellation policies etc.

Booking

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