Our last day with David and the most ambitious of the trips: climbing the Store Venjetinden via the route "Dream Dihedral". The peak is super prominent and dominates the view out the living room window of our flat, so it's extra fun to be climbing it.
There are clouds in the valley, which leads to some nervousness (particularly after yesterday), but we drive up out of them and end up under lovely blue skies, yay!
We put on the packs (heavy since we have crampons and ice axes with us) and head steeply up, up along a clear use trail (well, clear as long as you know where it starts). At first we're in green, then we transition to moving up and across some slabs. We're in the shade (which is nice for ascending) and have great views back across the clouds in the valley. At some point it's steep enough (at and times slippery enough) that David has us rope up and start moving on a short rope. Up, up we go until we hit a larger snow patch. Here we break out the ice axes and head up, up the steadily steepening snow (by the end it's over 40 deg, but it's good "Trittschnee", so not overly nervous-making for g) until we hit the rock.
Transition to the rock, some food, on with the climbing shoes, boots into the packs, and the real climbing starts. It's a very, very nice route. The rock is great and there's a lovely mix of styles (face, crack, and stemming), such an absolute pleasure. Having David do the leading means all we have to do is enjoy the climbing... luxury! Too bad it's only six pitches, we would happily have done more, particularly of the dihedral!
When we get to the ridge we change back into the big boots and enjoy the views a bit (except for the view down onto the couloir which we plan to descend... that makes g unhappy) before doing the last bit to the peak on a short rope. Some traversing under the ridge until we meet the "N ridge" route, which we follow up to the peak. Really amazing 360 panoramic views from here!
After plenty of pictures and fun we start the descent. This seems funny at first because we start out by going the wrong way, but after some walking and down-scrambling and snow crossing we end up on "Gallery" path: a really nice narrow path along a band that takes us around the corner and to the top of the couloir between the Store Venjetinden and the Lille Venjetinden. It's a great relief to g that the snow doesn't seem as steep as it did when we were above it. Out come the ice axes, on go the gloves and we start the descent. An initial experiment with sliding ends up with a three-way wipeout, so we just go with plunge-stepping down. Down down down we go until the snow runs out at a short waterfall. David lowers us over this (yay! canyoning!), abseils down to us, and then we continue. Down, down, until near the end of the snow, transition to rock, more descent and traversal, down another snow field, down, down, transition to rock, more traversing, down down another snow field, and then we're back on the path we took up in the morning. Last bit of descending and then we're at the car. David had estimated 3 hours up, 3 hours of climbing, and 3 hours for the descent; it took us 9:13 including all the breaks.
Stats: 9:13, 7.9km, 1390m up and down.
