Senja

People leaned into the wind trying to defend their faces from the snow being blown at them, unable to see where they were placing their feet as the spindrift turned everything into a white haze. Bags were shouldered and the slow, steady march started to try to find some shelter from the snow storm. 

This was a familiar scene but it was not the Cairngorm plateau. It was the view out of the windows of Tromso Airport.

The 4 hour drive to Senja turned into a 5.5 hour battle to stay on the road, driving through blizzards that reduced visibility to a few metres and our speed to a crawl on many occasions. Indeed, we stopped completely when the wind whipped up enough snow from the edge of the road to completely engulf the car and the road in a whirling whiteout. We arrived in one piece as the roads behind us were closed off due to avalanches crossing them.

It was clear that this was going to be an adventure!

​Senja is the second largest island in Norway and sits on the west coast a long way north of the Arctic Circle. Its highest peak is just over 1000m but the peaks rise straight out of the sea in fantastically jaggy formations that would fit the Lord of the Rings perfectly. Many people know it as a destination for ski mountaineering, ice climbing and mountaineering but in a slightly mythical way. It is a dreamscape that we know we want to go to experience but one that we can’t quite grasp. Even when you get there, it doesn’t seem real.

Having arrived in a snow storm, day one was always going to be about working out the lay of the land and calibration. There is little information available anywhere and our few ideas soon went out of the window when we started looking around. 

Despite its location in the far north, Senja is not immune to global changes in climate and climbing conditions. Three times in the winter of 2025, sea level temperatures rose to +8C and the snow cover and ice routes were badly affected. One of these periods of thaw occurred just before we arrived so the regular ice climbs we were hoping to find were not there. 

​By 1pm on day one and still having not climbed anything, Daniel, Lauren and I decided to try Chockstone Gully in Ersfjord, a climb next to Big Blue which was forming again after the melt but still looked too thin. Chockstone Gully was nice after the first pitch which was a mixture of snow and cruddy, layered ice. Many years of climbing ice in Scotland give you the confidence to climb less than perfect ice, a skill that was tested on every climb we did! But, we were up and running, we climbed an ice route in Senja!

​It’s common to need to make your own decisions and work out how it all works by yourself in Senja. On day two we climbed a route that overlooks Senjahopen that you can see from the road. This is all the information we had; what we could see from the road! Of course the first pitch turned into 40m of laminated, thin ice on smooth rocks that gave me two ice screws on the whole pitch. Pitch two was brilliant! Pitch three was a link up of new ice and pieces of old ice through steep rocks to the snow slopes above. We managed to walk down an unknown ridge, weaving a route between steep rocks and scrubby trees.

Then it rained up to 500m so we took a rest day.

​Our third day of climbing was on a mixed route that was reminiscent of mixed climbing in Scotland. It is called The Trolls, The Trolls and was first climbed by Rich Cross who was a real pioneer of climbing in Senja. He spotted the adventurous nature of the climbing here and was keen to put his extensive Scottish experience to good use. Rich made the first ascent of many amazing climbs in Senja and was good enough to send me the information before our trip. 

The Trolls, The Trolls climbs steepening moss filled rocky grooves for four pitches before it reaches a major chockstone. This gives a punchy crux with wild moves swinging out around the chockstone, above a very impressive drop. Mixed climbing on turf, frozen moss and rock is a completely different style of climbing to the ice climbing we were used to, and it felt pretty tough, especially with the cold wind blowing the heavy showers of hail up into our faces at all the wrong moments. Determined to finish, we topped out as the sun was setting, bathing our descent in a warm glow that we could only enjoy in between more blasts of snow and hail in our faces!

​Back on the ice for day four of climbing we went to Even Bigger Blue, which, as you’d expect, is an enormous sheet of ice in Ersfjord that would have a dozen different lines described on it if it was anywhere else. In Senja, we just knew it was about WI4 or WI5 and the rest we had to work out for ourselves. 

We made two pitches up easy snow climbing to get to the ice, then two pitches up good ice to get to the main event. We chose what looked like the fattest ice and were rewarded with fabulous ice in a wonderful position, looking across the beach at Okshornen (sometimes called the Devil’s Teeth).

​After another rest day we were ready to take on one of the bigger climbs, Hesten Islinja. This tops out at 700m but feels like a big mountain route. The approach is steep and avalanche prone, the climb is enormous in very impressive terrain and we needed to abseil the entire 400m climb because of the avalanche conditions on the regular walk off. The common theme of layered, delicate ice continued on the second pitch but, after that, it was all good to the top. What a fabulous climb!

​Our last day of climbing coincided with rain and another thaw forecast to arrive midday. We played it safe and went to experience one of Senja’s wild, narrow ridge mountaineering routes. Bent Vidar Eilertson is the local mountain guide who knows all the routes and has all the information. We were very grateful to him for sharing some of his knowledge, and in particular the details of this brilliant alpine route on Hatten. 

There was something peculiarly nervewracking about being on this incredibly narrow ridge. Most ridges have jagged rocks to hold onto and thread the rope through, but this one was smooth and clean with nothing but balance stopping us from taking the ride down the side. 

We made our summit before the rain and made good use of the occasional bolts placed by Bent to get down as the rain came in. This was the Senja I wanted to see on this trip and I was so grateful to get to explore one of these impossible looking ridges before we had to go home. We descended rock and frozen turf all the way to sea level, arriving on the dunes behind the sandy beach still in our crampons.

​Bent, the local mountain guide, is in a dilemma. He has all the climbing information in a big folder which he is happy to share with visiting climbers once they are in Senja. He is considering putting it together and publishing it as a guidebook and this is his dilemma. Should he give the world his unique knowledge and make it easier for climbers to come and experience this unique place, or should he try to maintain the uniqueness of the place by letting every visiting climber work it out for themselves, maintaining the adventurous spirit of the place?

There’s no doubt that climbing in Senja is pretty wild; it’s everything I was hoping for and more. It’s hard, exciting, scary, brilliant and testing; exactly what climbing should be.