Americans invade Riksgrandsen
Written: Dec 01 '99
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Product Rating:
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Pros: really cool people, really cool experience
Cons: the skiing sucks- unless your into the backcountry, of course.
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| kristenulmer's Full Review: Riksgransen |
It seemed only natural to be curious about the place, what with all those magazine covers. At least nine American ski and snowboard publications run cover photos taken at Riksgransen last year. Blunt Magazine showed a snowboarder launching such freaky huge air I got a nosebleed just looking at it. Good God, I though, could this wondrous place be the new elephant graveyard of the sacred ski glam?
But so far as I knew, besides these covers, Sweden's only other contribution to the world were a lot of smiling, Herculean, fabulously good-looking blond people. Oh, and a goal to drink massive quantities of alcohol on an international level, easily beating out the Irish, and quite possibly the Australians.
It was April. Ski photographer Tom Ericson and I sat together on the final 2 hour flight north from Stockholm to Kiruna. Tom had been sitting quietly for hours, when all of a sudden he yelped "It's the final countdown!" He seemed to have a thing for bad lyrics from the 70's and 80's. I eyeballed him curiously.
On my other side sat professional skier Richie Schley. With his cold-virus raw, runny nose and wide-eyed, excited demeanor, he seemed more horny Rudolf than man. "I wonder if Swedish women like Canadians!" he bubbled eagerly to no one, then sneezed on the back of some guys head. "Richie" I noted "all you think about are women and skiing". Defensively he came back; "That's not true! I also think about mountain biking."
I had spent twenty one hours squashed on planes with these two, dodging body fluid and bad music, then 2 more hours on a bus with some cool Swedish senior citizens dressed in woolen knickers, leather cross country ski boots, and big crusty rucksacks. I hoped it was going to be worth it.
All three of us sat up eager and tall in the bus seats as we rounded the last bend into Riksgransen, craning for a glimpse of the new Hollywood. By the time we reached the front door of the main hotel we had slumped back down. What a disappointment. There WAS no scene! The many square, red buildings made the place resemble a military boot camp. A huge RV parking lot on the edge of the compound was bursting with rigs, but NO people Even the cool old-timers had gotten off the bus 10 minutes before at a lonely gas station. It left us with a nagging question; How the hell had this flat, barren world made such a stink on our magazine light tables?
The ski area looked flat and firm. Scattered mountains jutted up at random and seemed out of character to the flat, white base. The occasional clump of trees where all under 20 feet high and malnourished from a pitiful 2 month growing season. What a strange, remote oasis for a ski area. We may be 250 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle at the most northerly ski area in the world, but I had still expected a party.
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The guide, in true James Bond style, was tall, dark and handsome. His name; was Seven… Number Seven. He may sing his words like a Swede, but I was suspicious; his hair was brown. His real name was Per As, but we'd been told he was randomly labeled the #7th best skier in Sweden by Akaskidor Magazine, so to us he was "Number 7".
One day in-bounds and things were beginning to make sense. The ski area was amusing with a million wind-blown whoop-t-do's, rollers, ridges, wall hits, cornices, and jib-bonks. Riksgransen has 6 lifts and a vertical drop of 450 meters. Being a natural snow park it's no wonder the boarders and skiers are so jazzed about launching huge air. April wasn't a good month for hucking though; we'd push off standing on ice yet our poles would sink deep into some random snow and jerk our hands back while our skis took off, but we'd recover no problem then our skis scraped across frozen waves of wind-blown until the last wave was soft and it stopped our skis dead, but our bodies hurled forward until eventually pulling free, then we'd start to initiate the first turn. The sound our skis made was something a sadist would create with long fingernails and a chalkboard and we accelerate, accelerate, ACCELERATE until we hit a big 'ol pile of snow again and our bodies keep going and, well, actually, it was pretty good fun. (Yup, this is a run-on sentence, it was a run-on moment- get over it). We weren't exactly inspired.
Yet in that mess lay a genuine underlying coolness; a real message. That first day we skied over the border into Norway (Riksgransen, after all, is Swedish for "border") and took the train 5 minutes home. On the way back Richie made gakking noises that resembled a cat choking on a fur-ball. I ignored him and stared instead at the white, barren landscape..
Being so close to the Norwegian Atlantic Coast and the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, April days rarely fell below 20 degrees F. Because of the latitude, the ski area didn't open until February, and by the time it closes the end of June the sun has long shined 24 hours a day and you can get one hell of a sunburn.
Certainly Riksgransen has the best skiing in Sweden. I confirmed this later at Disco night in the hotel bar. Me, Bile-Boy and Tom (sadly belting out "I wish that I had Jesse's Girl!" by Rick Springfield every few minutes) were the only ones not wearing polyester leisure suits. It was an eclectic crowd. A number of Swedes who normally guide in La Grave, France were hanging out for a season. One local was living in the same bedroom where his grandfather was born. A Frenchmen had followed his girlfriend here, got dumped and stayed, waiting tables. I finally got the scoop from an Elvis impersonator though; we spun the night away under an enormous, crumpled aluminum foil ball someone had hung from the ceiling.
Damn, that Elvis could jiggle his butt like a solid gold hussy. Riksgransen, he said, is an old railway station that started seeing skiers prior to WWII. Now forty employees live here year round, which goes to 150 in the winter. Most show up late after the Alps have been exhausted and the Riksgransen ice has turned to less-harsh springtime mush. There's a huge multi-glisse quarter pipe contest here the end of May that attracts the world's best riders and dozens of film crews and photographers. Ah HA! There's our magazine covers. Mumbling like he had a hair-lip, Elvis concluded; the best thing about Riksgransen, baby, is the fact it's right next to Norway. If you want to experience Riksgransen (he gyrated harder to emphasize his point) you must seek the Norwegian backcountry.
All right then, off we went. There were an overwhelming number of haul choices: helicopters, dog sleds, sailboat, snowmobiles? And perhaps did we want to go deep sea fishing, ice climbing, or killer whale watching? How about doing all these things at Midnight under the flashy northern lights, or wait a month and do it under the midnight sun? Richie certainly couldn't decide, he was too busy gasping for air, and I had made the mistake of reading "The Bridges of Madison County" the night before and couldn't do much except sob uncontrollably, and Tom, well, Tom…
Number 7 took over; one day ski touring on mellow slopes from an old, ratty Norwegian fishing boat, another day climbing and skiing a 1200 vertical meter 35-45 degree couloir straight down to the ocean.
The boat day was entertaining, but the Couloir was absolutely one of the coolest things I've ever skied. We drove into Norway in Number 7's car, passing road signs that read "SLUT" in big, capital letters along the way. I was feeling provoked and rabid until Number 7 explained that means "STOP" in Norwegian.
The Fjords, or famous water inlets, looked horribly cold. How the hell did those ducks put up with that? I tore my eyes loose and looked up. Mountains no higher than 2200 meters jutted from sea level in every direction. It was so easy! With roads snaking ubiquitously we could drive around and taken our pick of couloirs. Very few people ski tour, so we could have found plenty of first descents. But Number Seven took us to an obvious choice, and his favorite.
From the bottom it was stunning. Straight up from the Ocean rose a long, thick couloir stuck to a massive vertical rock wall almost the height of Yosemite's El Capitan. The couloir had a double fall-line, straight down and also sideways into the rock wall.
Parked on the side of the road, we saw a Norwegian sign that seemed pure gibberish to us. Slowly, Number 7 read "No… Canadians… Allowed". Richie laughed so hard he almost blew his eye sockets out.
We skinned up the flat backside, crossing the occasional reindeer track in the snow, in about 3 hours. The peak was heavily corniced but we found a little opening and leaned out for a look. It was like hovering in the clouds about to fall straight down into the ocean a mile away. Scary stuff. With the comforting sound of Richie's watery hack in the background, I dropped in and hit my first turns. Powder! Instantly the meaning of life flashed back to my brain.
We skied 20 turns to the colossal rock wall, then traversed back across the double fall line, getting fresh tracks down the same face again and again, a dozen times at least. And we still hadn't made but a dent in the long, exposed couloir.
No wonder the people living here seemed so happy. And I thought it was because they ate a lot of really good fish. Back in town that afternoon I took a hard look at all the backcountry skiers. Riksgransen is the telemark capital of the world; even Alta ain't got nothin' on this place. I saw a lone 10 year old girl with thick, crooked glasses gliding effortlessly on leather boots and skinny skis, a married couple in their 60's heading off toward a peak followed by the thick fumes of a herring picnic wafting from their rucksacks, a whole family skinning together, including the mother with a chest harness pulling a bundled infant on a red, plastic sled. The swelling RV park was a community of permanent weekend-warriors who lived for snow and mountains and the chance to explore this area.
The vibe here was earthy-pure. The resort offered attractions like Tai Chi, slide shows, a climbing wall, saunas on every corner, a little pool, good reindeer meat. And the locals brought us into their lives more than any other ski area I'd experienced. They had their own underground, steel bar named the Cantina, which was open only a few times a month when the itch was circulating. In the 70's two American Freestyler's lived in this 100-year old food shelter buried in the ground. One day they threw a lock on and left. The Swedes patiently waited 10 years before breaking the lock. It was still "furnished" with their dirty clothing and long rotted food, as if the Americans had planned a day jaunt yet never returned. The Swedes, of course, immediately thought it a great place for a bar.
A few nights before our departure, the urge hit and a western theme night was called. Everyone dressed like American cowboys with broad hats, pistols and leather chaps. This seemed as curious as Californians hosting Laplander theme night at Squaw and everyone showing up in their new Reindeer-fur ponchos.
The snow tunnel down to the bar was marked with 2 American Flags, some oil lamps, and a waist-high piece of cardboard jammed in the snow (the only toilet). A few YEE-HAW's! vibrated up the tunnel as I carefully stepped down the boot pack toward the tiny, steel room. BANG BANG BANG! Some guys were shooting blanks at each other in mock gun-fight, country music roared off the metal walls, and thick, black cigarette smoke curled slowly, trapped in the bunker with no where to go "Hey" everyone gushed in my direction (which is spelled "Hej" and means hello in Swedish, although it still felt like a swarm of Fonzi's storming the room). Squinting through the noise and haze, feeling like I was in deep at a gay sweat lodge, I could barely make out Richie and Tom sitting at one of the three tables. Beer costs around seven US bucks here, but they were swilling hard. Richie was flirting mercilessly with a local blond goddess. He's not thinking about skiing or mountain biking just now, I thought, and scrambled right back outside and took a mad gasp of fresh air. I went back to my room and dreamed all night with a Swedish accent.
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Hungover, Tom shouted with encouragement "Go big or go home, right?" Hoping we'd jump the cliff and he'd get a great photo. I craned over the edge; the landing looked wind-blown hard and dead flat. Replying with an enthusiasm I didn't feel. "Yeah, go big first, then go home".
Richie scoffed at us. "No way man, go big, and you'll HAVE to go home". Visions of compound tibia fractures danced in our heads. This day we rented snowmobiles and scurried 10 kilometers across the white plains in search of bigger mountains and a good photo op. Back on the Swedish hard-packed again, we weren't too psyched to huck. But keeping those magazine covers in mind Richie quickly found a better landing off a 30-footer and lined it up. "It looks like powder down there" he said.
Oh, I don't think so.
Now, I've heard of slab avalanches, but I'd never seen one. It didn't even occur to us there might be slide danger; it was bloody rock hard here. Yet sure enough, when Richie landed, the fracture ripped 5 feet deep under him and straight across like a shot. Tom was standing under the cliff and it cracked to his feet, like a scene straight from "Earthquake".
I heard the roar and looked down to see Richie getting churned in refrigerator-size chunks of ice. Number 7 was on the flats 250 feet below crazily running out of the way. The slide bucked to a haul milliseconds before crushing the snowmobiles.
Bolting down to Richie, he was hunched over his ski poles breathing heavy, charged but very alive. As a symbol to his survival, at that moment, his throat started to rumble in a buried, base-like timbre. As he straightened up it crept higher and higher to a rich, gurgling crescendo until, PTOOEY! Out flew a greenish hunk of phlegm the size of a half dollar.
It wobbled slowly through the air like a lopsided UFO and landed with a tiny poof in the white snow. Richie stood tall, eyes shining with pride. The splotch lay peacefully between us and I thought, "Why…of course!". And it was that simple. Finally, I had discovered the meaning of Riksgransen.
We're too far north. The glam scene shouldn't be wasted here! This is the European Alta; the place where you can wear duct tape on your clothing with pride. It's where being labeled the Seventh best skier in the country is absurd. It's where phlegm is not obscene, but rather cherished. Riksgransen is about adventuring; backcountry touring, herring belches, shooting guns, old couples in stinky woolen knickers, and not being afraid to take a leak in front of your friends behind a piece of cardboard. The more one adventures, the more these things don't matter.
"Everybody Wang Chung Tonight!" erupts Tom.
I looked at my three friends and felt giddy with affection. Richie's not hurt, Tom is singing, and phlegm is the nectar of the ski gods.
Maybe tomorrow we'll even start calling number 7 by his real name.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
kristenulmer
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Member: Kristen Ulmer
Location: Salt Lake City, Utah
Reviews written: 25
Trusted by: 91 members
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