Tromsø: Arctic Paradise

Words cannot describe how insane our adventure to the arctic north was. Seeing epic snow capped mountains beneath the gleaming aurora borealis made my skin crawl many a time. It's something about seeing giant mountains towering above me that literally make my insides churl in anticipation. I fucking love seeing a mountain in the distance and deciding then and there to bush whack up to the top, regardless of the difficulty, and that's exactly what we did on this trip for three days straight; two were spent scrambling up mountains and the last wading into a frigid ice fjord.

Tromsø is located at about 69 degrees latitude and is the third largest city north of the arctic circle (the first two being in Russia). For 45 days during the summer the sun never sets, and 45 days in the winter the sun never rises. So you can imagine this is a pretty desolate place. You have to be a pretty hardened individual to live here; maybe thats why they have the highest number of bars per capita! Despite this, the people around the city were incredible helpful to us during our time here. Even our Airbnb host was incredibly kind, despite arriving early to the site of her house completely trashed and one of her wine-covered, puke stained mattresses soaking in the bath tub.

We got to the city on Thursday afternoon at about 10am, and I could already sense how different the time difference was up here; the sun was hovering right above the horizon and looked as if it would set at any time. It was pretty disorienting, especially after leaving Oslo early in the morning. Our group of 12 friends rented two cars at the airport and then we made our way to the airbnb, which was a beautiful 18th century house located in center of the city. Tromsø is situated on an island with the highest point being in the center, which is connected to land on either side with two long bridges. The house had one wall made completely of glass windows that gave a breathtaking view out to the city below.

Our main reason for coming to Tromsø was to see the northern lights, so we wasted no time in reaching that goal. As the rest of the group dumped their stuff in the house and got situated, Joey, Trond, and I took a look at google maps and did some research on some potentially cool places to find outside the city, where the light pollution wouldn't be so strong. We decided to head in the direction of Tromvik, which was a fishing village about an hour to the northwest of the city. We packed into our two small cars and set out with enough food, alcohol, and firewood to last out there until past 1am. Since I rented one of the cars, I was the driver for the trip. At first I was nervous about this, but soon realized that driving in Norway was easier than back home. The street signs were pretty easy to understand, and Norwegians are known for being very calm and understanding drivers. I guess nothing could be worse than Boston...

We could see mountains around Tromsø, but after we got out of the city I could really comprehend how massive these bad boys were (refer to that mountain sensation I talked about above). We stopped a couple of times to get pictures of the scenery around us. Even though the sun had set about an hour ago (3:30pm, even in February!) we could still get some great pictures. Three members of the group had some serious camera gear, so working without light wasn't a problem. Trond and I kept debating which of the various mountains to bushwhack up all along the trip, and eventually we found a good looking one that didn't look too dangerous according to both our viewpoints and the topo maps I had downloaded. The northern lights peak from 10pm-1am, so we had plenty of time. The beginning of the trek was pretty steep, but we all had so much energy that we blasted our way up half the mountain to the main plateau in about 40 minutes. We we're all pretty hungry and cold, so we pushed a bit farther to a good viewpoint on a ledge where we had a 180 degree view of some monstrous mountains that fell into a large bay.

After hanging out for a while at the fire and seeing some very brief flashes of green in the sky, I really wanted to go up the main mountain to get a 360 degree view of the area. It looked like a pretty steep climb up to the top, and it was hard to gauge elevation in the darkness, but we were all pretty adventurous and we realllllly wanted to see those lights. After losing one phone into a giant crevasse, and the rock scramble quickly turning into an ice scramble, I started to get a bit worried. I have a really outgoing mentality when it comes to exploring the outdoors, and sometimes this can get me in trouble. I like to think myself as pretty experienced cause I've done a ton of mountain climbing and such, and I know when I've reached my limits. It's a lot harder when you're in a large group and you have to think of the health and stamina of the entire group, rather than just a smaller group of individuals. Some of us had pushed up to the point where the rocks were getting even more icy and especially lose, which made us realize that we had to stop.

We gingerly began making our way down the death slope, and took a couple breaks along the way. During one of those breaks we heard voices below us that belonged to the rest of the group. When we went quiet to get a better listen, I realized they were screaming crazily and I freaked out, thinking someone had gotten hurt. Then one of the guys in our group shouted to us and pointed up to the sky behind the mountain, and my eyes went wide in absolute wonder. I realized then why people say the lights seem to "dance" in the sky. The top of the mountain was caked in shimmering and shifting green hues, and as we screaming in utter delight the greens shifted to violet which stirred us into a frenzy. This was hands down the coolest natural thing I've ever witnessed in my life. Pictures and words can't even describe the effect the aurora borealis have on a person; you just gotta see it yourself.

It was hard to think the second day of the trip could have topped that first awesome night, but honestly it was pretty close. A smaller group of us brought our skis up for the trip, so we were looking to do a tour for the day up to one of the mountains. We decided on Tromsdalstinden , which had been staring down at us as we gazed out onto Tromsø. There was a great ski trail up the valley to the base of the mountain, so we got some great tracks as we cruised our way up in the great arctic sunny weather. We took the same approach as the previous night; point and go. However we had a big setback right when we got to the base of Tromsdalstinden; Vince, our Dutch friend, tore his entire binding off his ski. As we tried to think of what to do, we noticed Trond (who was a bit ahead of us at the time) had decided to just start climbing up one the side of valley. We threw off our skis and gear and followed him up the steep slope. If you've ever seen Lord of the Rings, this looked eerily similar to the scene of the fellowship journeying through Caradhras in the first movie. We caught finally up to Trond and we set off to the next false peak we could see. As we neared it, we could see signs of a cornice, so we slowed down and eventually reached the side of a giant 500 foot death-cliff. We got some great pictures before we started to freeze our asses off and head down. We didn't really want to start an avalanche and the sun was going to set in an hour or so, so we called off Tromsdalstinden. Bringing the skis paid off big time at this point of the trek. I gave vince my skis and uni-skied down the tracks which was a great challenge and incredibly fun.

The last day many of us woke up pretty late after a night of drinking, so a smaller group of us took one of the cars out and just drove out into the countryside. The weather was rainy with extremely high winds, so we stayed in the car most of the time but stopped at a couple places to get some views. Near the end of the drive we came to the end of a fjord with some bright blue water that we really wanted to check out. We parked the car and wandered out to the grassy shore. The wind was blasting into our faces as the rain soaked throw all of our clothes; we didn't really think to bring rain jackets north of the arctic circle in February. As I was already soaked through, I decided to wade out into the icy water to try and reach a little island off the peninsula we were on. I had my muck boots on, but eventually the surf breached my boots and my feet were exposed to the icy water, but I pushed on anyway. I was within 20 feet of the island, but I had slipped and sunk to my thighs and I still had my phone and car keys in my pocket so I turned around. You can imagine how fast I ran back to the car with the threat of frostbite so close to my toes.

Highly recommend anyone traveling to Europe in any time of year to take a trip up to Tromsø; its natural wonders are so incredible. I have a brief break from trips for the next two weeks until March and April, during which I am going somewhere different in Europe every single weekend! Planning four hours on end for cheap flights and cheap lodging pays off :) Poland, Sweden, Lillehammer, Dublin, Lofoten, Lithuania, Latvia, Trondheim, and Amsterdam are on the list!!

As always, check out the gallery for more pics.