*words and photography by Paul Caddy
When a friend asks whether you want to go sailing in the Arctic, you think about it (I'm not a sailer). When your friend adds, “Oh, and we'll be ski touring too,” you go. You drop everything and just go.
Arctic Norway has some of the best sea-to-summit and summit-to-sea ski touring in the world. At almost 70 degrees north—the same latitude as the far north of Alaska—you'd think that you'd need a state-of-the-art, nuclear-powered icebreaker to reach the shores of this Scandinavian country. But you don't. Thanks to the relatively mild Atlantic currents which slosh warm waters from the Caribbean's white sand beaches to the far north of Europe, the coast of Norway pretty much remains ice-free throughout the year (with water temps hovering in the 40s Fahrenheit). And yet, wonderfully, the mountains remain caked in snow. It is a paradise for sailing and ski touring.
Timing is key though. For six weeks every winter the sun doesn't rise. This is the "mørketid" ("dark time"). It isn't the ideal time for exploring the mountains on skis, even though some muted sunlight from below the horizon washes into the sky for a fleeting few hours a day. The locals hibernate in their homes with candles and thick, fuzzy blankets and dream of the time after the spring equinox when the days grow longer by ten minutes each day.
By the time we, a group of four ski tourers and sailers of varying abilities, arrived last April the sun rose at about 5.30 a.m. and didn't set until past 8 p.m. Two weeks later, the sun rose an hour earlier and set an hour later. It never really got dark.