In 2020, on satellite images, I spotted the cool looking west face of Storskiva (848m) on the island of Moskenesøya, in the far west of Lofoten. It seemed very hard to reach due to steep sea cliffs guarding the approach on both sides. I was able to find only one photo of this face, taken from a boat. It showed a magnificent spur splitting the wall.

In August 2021, Misha Mishin and I drove to the village of Reine and took a boat to Vindstad, from which we planned to start hiking to the face. It was very rainy, and in the end we decided to sleep in a waiting room at the Vindstad harbor instead of in our tents.

The following morning, we started hiking at 6 a.m., carrying only daypacks. We followed a faint trail over a mountain pass to the Hermannsdalen valley in order to reach the west coast of Moskenesøya. Then we followed the shoreline northward for a kilometer, climbing above saltwater canyons and over steep grass slopes. By sheer luck it was doable, and way less tiring than we’d imagined.

The face looked quite intimidating from below. Its left side is probably the steepest in Lofoten, while the right side presented an imposing slab with some roofs; in the middle of these two lay the spur, with the only continuous-looking crack system on the entire face. That was our line.

To reach the spur we climbed four pitches on broken slabs, heading slightly left—not difficult technically, but they were very compact and with poor protection.

It was noon when we started up the main spur. The next 11 pitches provided some of the best rock I have seen, but the grass in the cracks made the climbing slow and poorly protected. On some pitches we needed to dig out every gear placement, and on some we were hand jamming and pinching grass tufas or scratching mud pockets to stay on the wall. The nut tool was our best friend.

Here and there we encountered faster free climbing pitches, but the going mainly alternated between easy aid and bold slabs. Often we needed to lower the leader back down to retrieve gear in order to complete pitches only 30m long. We were also very lucky the crack system ran straight up and that we didn’t have to do any big traverses.

This would be a three-star free climb without all the moss in the cracks. The location was amazing, with eagles flying above our heads, the waves of the Atlantic Ocean raging all the way from the North Pole, and no mobile phone reception anywhere. True adventure climbing.

At 11 p.m. we reached a big grass ledge and thought the climbing would be over, but we still needed to do one exit pitch to reach easier terrain. Once again we were lucky and got through the rock barrier on our first try, as it was already pitch dark and we had no clue which crack would lead us to the top.

After midnight we hiked to the top of Storskiva and started descending straight away. It was misty, and navigating by GPS was the only option. We returned to the harbor at Vindstad at 4 a.m., after 22 hours on the go, and crashed on the floor in the waiting room, only to be woken up by hikers few hours later.

We named the route Ørneeggen (“Eagle Spur”); difficulties were up to N7 (5.11) C1 in 15 pitches of climbing. No gear was left behind. [Editor’s Note: In June 2016, Catalan climbers Guille Cuadrado, Jordi Esteve, and Pau Gómez climbed the east shoulder (Point 551m) of Storskiva, adja- cent to Bunes Beach, possibly the first technical route on the peak; see AAJ 2018.]

— Juho Knuuttila, Finland

Editor's Note: More photos, including a photo showing the route line on the west face of Storskiva, can be seen at Juho Knuuttila's website.