Gerber Cucurell and Jordi Esteve, who’ve made repeated visits to Lofoten from Catalonia, climbed two new routes on Moskenesøya island in May.

First up, on May 25, was a new line on the west face of Helvetestinden (602m), overlooking Bunes Beach. Back in 2015, Cucurell and Esteve climbed a new route up the left side of this face, Terra i Mar, while their friends Guillermo Cuadrado and Salvador Llorens opened a line toward the right side: Noensfoten (570m, ED+ 6c).

Cucurell and Esteve’s 2022 route, Rett Opp (“Straight Up,” Norwegian 7- R), starts with the first five pitches of Noensfoten, including a very run-out pitch of 6 (5.10). It began to rain as Cucurell led this pitch, and by the time Esteve joined him at the belay, the rock was soaked. “But we decided to believe in the forecast, and after a good breakfast, we continued up the wall,” Cucurell wrote at his blog. After eight new pitches they joined the 2009 route Ticket to Greenland and followed easier climbing to the top.

On May 30, the two climbed the north face of Ytre Brasrastindan (830m), possibly the first climbing route on this impressive and isolated tower. Cucurell and friends had done a reconnaissance of Brasrastindan from the south during a 2016 trip, but were unable to summit the peak nor even see the north face.

In 2019, Cucurell, Esteve, and Bernat Bilarrassa made an attempt starting from the Horseid Valley to the south. After a difficult approach along the coast, they climbed a 300m gully to avoid the broken lower wall, then scrambled to the foot of the main face and started up. On the fifth pitch, a rope pulled off a loose block that hit Bilarrassa in the head, breaking his helmet. He was not seriously hurt, but they decided to retreat, which involved an open bivouac and a circumnavigation of the mountain via the Selfjord Valley in order to return to their camp at Horseid.

Cucurell and Esteve started their approach to Ytre Brasrastindan in 2022 from a camp in the Selfjord Valley to the east. The two had trained, Cucurell wrote, “by doing complicated routes without using cams (nuts only) and with a single rope, with the goal of learning how to solve problems with very few resources.”

On May 30, they woke at 3 a.m. and reached the north face at 7 a.m. Following the same line they had attempted in 2019, the two climbed 20 pitches, some wet and others broken and loose. The crux pitch (6+ or hard 5.10) involved 35m of blank, technical slab with very poor protection. From the top of Ytre (“Outer”) Brasrastindan, they traversed the south side of the ridgeline to the main peak, then dropped to the south and west to eventually reach the beach at Horseid.

The route was called Nordside (6+ R/X). As with their previous routes on Lofoten, the Catalans climbed in traditional style and left no gear on the route. They used a single set of nuts, one set of Totem cams, Camalots numbers 3 and 4, and a 60m single rope.

— Information from Gerber Cucurell