Ice-climbing in Rjukan, Norway

I recently wrote a piece about ice-climbing in Rjukan, Norway, for the Guardian's travel pages. Obviously I mentioned the famous World War II  heavy-water raid and it was interesting to discover that two new film versions of the story are said be in production. Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle has signed up to tell the story  in a 10-part TV mini-series called Telemark, while The Heavy Water War is a Norwegian television series featuring Anna Friel.  

The story has previously been told in The Heroes of Telemark, a 1965 film starring Kirk Douglas and which has been criticised for departing from the facts.

Ice-climbing at Rjukan

Vemork power station, Rjukan

Rjukan, situated in the centre of southern Norway, is possibly the best, and certainly most sociable, place to ice-climb in Europe. There are over 150 routes and icefalls in a deep gorge, all easily accessible from the road. Climbers can scale the frozen waterfalls without having to spend hours trekking up a mountain or worrying about getting caught out in the dark. And many of the routes are single-pitch affairs, often close to each other - thus enabling friends to chat between climbs.

As well as having a stable climate that guarantees a long season and conditions that mean it is possible to climb almost everyday, another attraction of the place is its history. As mentioned in a previous blogpost, the ice-axe and crampon business takes place in the same area as the Heroes of Telemark raid, one of the most daring attacks of the second world war. Here, Norwegian saboteurs scaled the steep gorge sides before blowing up the part of the plant in which Germans were collecting 'Heavy water'  which was needed to make a nuclear bomb.
 

Tim Wilkinson at the start of Bakvien

The remaining building is now a very good museum that is well worth visiting. However, on a recent climbing trip to the Rjukan area, I came a little closer to understanding just what the Norwegian saboteurs achieved.  Tim, my climbing partner, and I had just finished Bakvien, a three-pitch route in the upper gorge that tops-out at the museum when we were approached by two people. It turned out that one of them was the daughter of Fredrik Kayser, a member of the Gunnerside saboteur team. We were a little dazed after spending the past hour being battered by strong winds and falling ice, but it was fascinating to hear about her father's exploits during the war.

Kayser's daughter explained that she was there to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the raid. A high-profile ceremony took place at Vemork on the 28 February, but she was back at the museum to meet a group of modern-day Norwegian soldiers who were just about to finish a re-creation of the original journey over the Hardangervidda plateau. We were lucky enough to see them marching up the route of the old railway.

Along with Joachim Ronneberg (the last surviving member of the raid), Kayser's role was to place sausage-shaped explosive charges on the cylinders used in the heavy-water process. These were located in the cellar of the building, but the door was locked so the two found an entrance through a cable duct. After crawling through this, they surprised a Norwegian caretaker, whom Kayser held at gunpoint while the team began to lay their charges. Eventually the cylinders were destroyed and 3,000 pounds of heavy water, about four or five months' production, flowed towards the drain.

Vemork bridge. Photograph: Mathias Willerup

The Abalakov thread

March 24 is the anniversary of the death of Yevgeniy Abalakov, the Russian mountaineer who died in 1948 at the age of 41. As Soviet mountaineer No.1, he was the first to climb Stalin Peak (renamed Communism Peak in 1962, Ismoil Somoni Peak in 1998). On February 17, 1943, Alabakov was part of a group of military mountaineers who worked their way through mine and ice fields on Mt Elbrus to throw off Nazi flags and set up Soviet ones. This symbolic event crowned the 15-month-long battle for the Caucasus.

These days the name Albalakov is more often associated with Yevgeniy's older brother Vitaly - also a mountaineer and regarded as the 'father' of Russian climbing. Vitaly Abalakov made many difficult ascents including Lenin Peak in 1934. He also did considerable work on climbing equipment development and most mountaineers will be familiar the Abalakov thread, his most famous invention, This simply consists of two holes being drilled into solid ice to form a v-like channel. Tape or cord is then threaded through and tied together to form a loop, which is then used for belaying or abseiling.

I was introduced to the thread on a recent ice climbing trip and must admit to feeling extremely nervous at the thought of putting my trust in what is essentially a bit of tat wrapped around some frozen water. It was soon demonstrated just how strong the belay actually is, although I'll leave it up to mountaineer Andy Kirkpatrick to give a full explanation.

Of course with great inventions there can be conjecture as to who came up with the original idea. It has been said that it was actually the American climber Jeff Lowe who developed the technique which may explain why in certain parts of the globe the anchor is known as the V-thread. Good historical background can be found in this article from Glenmore Lodge.

I was hoping to find a great article about one of the Abalakov brothers unfortunately there were only a few mentions in the archive. The following article mentions Vitaly but I reproduce it merely to illustrate what elite Scottish mountaineers were wearing circa 1974.

(The Guardian, July 15 1974)