Very few people have put Store Blåmann on their climbing map. Yet this summit features a compact granite north face, overhanging and streaked with cracks over a height of 400m. Not far from Tromsø, even further north than the famous Lofoten Islands, this 1,044-metre peak facing the icy Norwegian Sea has a dozen major routes leading to its summit. Among them is the extremely difficult Arctandria, recently climbed by Norwegian Tuva Stavø. Meet this eighth-degree climber.
In 2005, Didier Berthod laid – and stuck – his hands in this Arctandria route. It’s a de facto harbinger of cracks to come. It was then the late Hansjörg Auer who reached the summit after a one-day ascent in 2007. He said : “Considering the technical difficulties and the alpine character of the route, it can be described as one of the most difficult of its kind in Europe.“
Since these ascents, other tries have been rare. “There were three very good climbers, two Swedish and one Norwegian, Andreas Klarström, Erik Grandelius and Martin Skaar Olslund, in 2011, and then a local climber from Tromsø, Thomas Meling, around 2016, who followed up the route with a bit of an update,” Tuva Stavø tells me.
She discovered this wall, Store Blåmann : “I’d just come off a winter during which I’d skied a lot, so I wasn’t in great shape for climbing. I really loved the atmosphere on this face and the quality of the rock. So I concentrated more on