The Geita! Leaping into the twilight

Neil Pomfret

“But I haven’t got any rock boots” was simply not a good enough excuse in Graham and Pete’s book. So with a borrowed pair of boots off we went to have some fun on the last day of our stay on Austvagoya in the early evening. The aim was to climb the Geita (Goat in English) pillar and then leap the gap between the two summit pinnacles which made up the horns. The climb up is probably graded around Severe and starts a few metres to the West of the little arete at the back of the pillar. The horns stand at about 600m above sea level and 200m above base level. The first horn (West) is about 0.5-l m above the second and separated by 1-l.5 m, the platform’s are about 4 square metres and both slope to the East quite steeply.

Walking up the steep hillside to the pinnacles the Geita is consistently visible, and so is the town cemetery directly below!! The Geita looks over the town of Svolvaer and in the past when someone has done the jump the town bells clanged in celebration. The main route starts at the back of the pillar which is climbed via a chimney and two traverses, new caving bolts occur in two places, and provide good belay points.

While a Norwegian pair were descending after a partly successful attempt Graham and John started to climb. We watched as they made their way up with apparent ease, unfortunately the light was deteriorating so we had to start climbing before they did the jump.

The second group was a threesome, Jason led, Pete was middle man and I followed up the rear. While standing at the base I could catch parts of Graham’s conversation he was having problems finding a suitable belay. After finding some bolts below the sloping platform of the first pinnacle he quickly made his jump. John followed soon after, his climb up to the first pinnacle was signalled with a hearty “only meeee!!”

Back down near the bottom of the route Pete was climbing just above me with his horrible yellow and black striped posing pants dominating the view. He, climbed up the chimney, which we both thrutched up, while Jason had shown how elegantly it could be done without beer bellies. Jason and next Pete traversed left to the next belay point consisting of two new bolts. Both Graham and John abseiled down and regaled us with their psyched up story of jumping the horns, whilst grinning like Cheshire cats.

After I finished the traverse Jason started up the last pitch, “where the hell do you go” – that assemblage of words often used in mountain realms, was given a suitable answer, “I dunno – maybes round there mate”. Jason edged around and out of sight, next appearing on top of the first pinnacle, not looking (or sounding) too happy with the current amount of exposure. Jason jumped safely, next Pete’s turn, before he started to climb we shared the odd expletive and mentioned mummy a few times, Pete then climbed easily up and did the jump to join Jason on the second pinnacle.

We had been climbing up the back of the Geita, so when I had traversed round the first pinnacle a breathtaking vista appeared before me, a few more moves and two grinning faces were in front of me. Apparently there were two good nobbles on the down-sloping rock in front of me, where a good stance could be made, balancing with one foot and one hand. Well apparently Gaping Gill is a mountain in Mongolia, eventually I managed to get into a relatively comfortable stance (relative to lying on a bed of nails). I can remember counting down Three-Two-One, for the cameras, but I’m not sure whether I shouted Geromino or Yippee, I probably screamed!! I can remember seeing the edge of the second pinnacle getting alarmingly close, but feeling irresponsibly calm about it, and I can also remember Pete’s arm coming up and checking my momentum (cheers Pete). I sat and gazed around, it was beautiful, the sun was below the mountains, but it was still light. After edging around the platform, all feeling a bit jittery we abseiled off; without a hitch. Then walked down the hillside, and were back to the camp-site for a twilight dram at 12.15am. (This ascent was one of the Lofoten party’s ascents contributing to the Club’s meet in Norway during the summer of 1992).