Rappelling in Kolsås

Oslo from the top of Kolsås

Kolsås is a mountain ridge on the west side of Oslo in the city of Bærum. The mountain was formed from a volcano that lies somewhere near Oslo, it exploded some thousands of years ago and the lava pushed up all the rock and dirt from that area into a mountain. The mountain is made of different layers of rocks, one of the layers near the top is worth a lot of money in Germany to rock collectors. A rock the size of a couch cushion is worth twice as much as my car. I can't believe something so insignificant as a speckled rock is worth more than the one material object I rely the most (besides my computer). Of course a lot of things are worth more than my car, so its not saying much. Because of all the rock on the mountain it is one of the best climbing crags in all of Norway, in fact it was the very first place people started climbing in Norway. There are about 200 routes on the south face of the mountain. I'm guessing the mountian must be pretty famous because Claude Monet even painted it in 1895.

This is me going down a 32ft drop. Its not as scary as it looks; the rope, harness, and rock clamps together can take about 5000 lbs of weight (basically they could hoist a car up to the top of the mountain). Rappelling, or going down, was the most fun because it takes no talent or strength and is a whole lot easier than climbing back up. The only bad part about rappelling is that you have to climb back up again. I always thought you had to be really strong to go rock climbing, but, believe it or not, the only strength you need is in your fingers. Climbing up was only about 26ft because we started higher than where we climbed down. Rock climbing isn't as difficult as it seems, your toes are what hurts the most because you have to where special climbing shoes that are a couple sizes smaller than your regular shoes so they can fit into really small places. Supposedly the shorter you are the easier it is to climb (finally being short has its advantages!). The basic idea is to use your legs to hoist you up, so finding good places to put your feet is the most important part. Starting off was the hardest because there weren't many good spots my feet could go without slipping. I didn't think I was going to be able to climb up it at first, I thought the only way I was gonna get back up was if I walked up the trail on the side of the rock. I had to get a boost up higher and then it was pretty easy because the rock was more miss-shaped at the top. We only had time to rappel twice and climb once because we wanted to get a chance to rappel a steeper rock that was 114ft to the bottom. It probably took about 3 or 4 minutes to rappel the 114 feet. When we got to the bottom we had to hike back to the trail and passed a guy who had fallen or something, I'm not sure what happened because they were speaking in Norwegian, but I think he hurt his ankle.

The first picture is of the Oslo Fjord, which isn't really a fjord according to Norwegian standards. The second picture is looking towards the northwest at 8pm, even though it looks to about 4 or 5 in the afternoon.