I recently bough this book on amazon “Powder, the 50 best runs in the planet” and came across the Lyngen Alps, in Norway. I immediately reached out to my good friend Martin who is from Norway to ask him about this place and ended up saying we were going to eventually ski there together. This was mid pandemic and we said to each other, lets just book it for next year and hope the pandemic is over by then, so we did.
I included this trip as part of my honeymoon. We/Martin found out this amazing place called Lyngen Lodge, founded 12 years ago (if I recall correctly) by an British skier and adventurer who did a sailing and skiing trip through the Lyngen Alps and had the vision of what this place could become in the near future. Nowadays groups of wealthy or at least very well off people come to his place to ski, to watch the green lights, to watch orcas swim near your boat or just to chill having a glass of wine or reading a book staring at the almost unreal scene of the fjords of the Lyngen Alps has to offer.
Again, the more you travel to remote places the more impress you should be with the world. The more magical places and experiences you will encounter and live. It is becoming very addicting to travel places to experience nature and co exist with it.
It took quite a bit of effort to get to this remote place. Since Venezuela is so isolated from the world because of sanctions and internal political and economic situation it was quite difficult to travel anywhere. Today things have gotten a little bit better, having direct flights to Istanbul, Madrid and Lisbon on a weekly basis, but before you had to connect either through the Dominican Republic or through Panama.
So I traveled Caracas – Santo Domingo – Miami – Paris – Bergen – Tromso. I made those two pit stops, in Miami and Paris to meet with old friends, but still keep in mind that you either stop in Oslo or Bergen before flying to Tromso. The flight into Tromso has been the worse regarding turbulence, and apparently it is quite common, so be ready for a bumpy ride. Also I heard there were a couple flights from London and Zurich, but I would highly recommend flying with a Norwegian Arline, since the flight in Tromso can be very bumpy and an experienced pilot will make a huge difference they say. Once you have arrived in Tromso you have to take two ferries in order to arrive to the island where Lyngen Lodge is located.
Keep in mind that weather in the Lyngen Alps is one of the most unpredicted micro climates ever. It is so difficult to predict that the guides there make decisions in an 1 hour window. So on our way here Martin just kept on telling me if we had one good hour window of beautiful views the trip would have been worth it…. We had quite a decent weather window the entire time we stayed there, so we had the chance to take in very amazing views.
The place is truly a hidden gem. It sits in front of the main coastline street, but kinda elevated, so the traffic doesn’t really bother you. It was kinda deceiving how in the pictures you are not aware of how close you are to a main “highway”, but it only bothered me when I arrived there but never again. The place is breathtaking and has all the luxury high end accommodations you need. Hot tub, saunas, heated mud rooms, heated bathroom floors, mediation room, tv room, souvenirs and apparel store.
They have everything you need to rent and buy. The store has some very cool Peak Perfomance clothes in case you forget anything. And then they algo have skis, boots, skins, navy backpacks and everything you need to go touring. Depending on weather conditions the guides will take the boat. It is a pretty nice looking wooden boat which will take you to any of the surrounding islands and fjords. If you are lucky enough you might even get to see some dolphins and whales…. Earlier in the season, I believe it is around November you will get to see them almost for certain.
Whales Picture
Our group was a perfect fit actually, meaning most of us had similar fitness and skiing level. Groups were separated into 6 basically based fitness levels and backcountry skiing experience. From my understanding the idea is always to jump on the boat and go skiing “from sea to summit” as long as the weather and sea allows it, so the days which the weather is not cooperating enough yo either ski in the mountain behind the hotel (you basically start skinning up from the hotel literally) or they transport you in the hotel vans to a nearby mountain.
There are very few places in the world where you can actually ski down and have water as a view, but I believe there are none places where you can ski down and have ocean an other islands around you as a scenery. Iceland being the closest one, you do have oceans, but you do not have the fjords (islands), so this really makes it a very unique experience.
I was supposed to ski only 3 days, but decided to stay an extra 4th day to continue enjoying the surprisingly good snow. Again, as I mentioned before weather changes every 10 minutes or so, so weather was very variable, sometimes we had beautiful views, while just minutes after we had terrible visibility… but snow all around was pretty pretty descent, it wasn’t even considered corn snow. This very last day, we were lucky enough to have very flat waters to navigate, so the decided to take us to the furthest island skiable, and the only way to reach here was by dingy, pretty surreal experience this was. It honestly felt like one of those 007 movies, with the vintage wooden boat, the dingy, the arctic scenery, champagne in the boat waiting for you after a long skiing day… What a trip honestly.
MiBiCi Adventures 