Store Jægervasstinden as seen from Ullsfjorden.


First ascent: Geoffrey Hastings, William C. Slingsby, Walter Perry Haskett-Smith (UK) and Elias Hogrenning (N), 1898.

The Store Jægervandtind
"Now we were in full swing, and during the next fortnight we had nothing but success. Each succeeding mountain
expedition, if possible, seemed to possess more interesting characteristics than the last one we had undertaken; each
was, in fact, most enjoyable.
We shall long remember the bergschrund into which on another day our leader cut a way, and hacked an icy staircase
up through the overhanging lip on the other side; nor shall we soon forget the wicked Trold which looked ddown upon us
maliciously all the time, nor the steep couloir above, and the element of uncertainty as to our position, which urged us
quickly onward. ‘Ah! Now we know where we are. For- ward!’ See our new leader swinging himself out of sight at
the end of the first of the three peaks which together form the Store Jægervandtind. Hear him call out, ‘Come along,
you fellows: it’s all right.’ See the narrow snow ridge; no fear of cornices in this nightless land. Look down far, far
below on both sides to the glaciers. But on, on, on. A second peak, another gap and narrow connecting ridge, and
the top.
Was ever such a view seen in Finmarken before? In every direction it was clear, and everywhere it was beautiful. North,
beyond Pipertind and the Bird Island, was the open sea. Beyond that, so far as is known, is no land between it and
the Pole. A maze of grand peaks surrounded us. North-east was the Jökulsfjord and the one glacier in Europe which
launches a flotilla of little icebergs into the sea direct. This remarkable glacier was explored a few weeks later by
Hastings. The head of the long forest valley of Reisendal could be seen. South-east, beyond Lyngen, could clearly be
seen, not 40 miles away, the sterile uplands of that intrusive Russian land. A little further south were the hog-backed
Swedish mountains, from which in spring the nomad Lapps drive their reindeer away from the plague of flies to the sea
coasts of Lyngen, Balsfjord, and other places."

(William C. Slingsby: Mountaineering In Arctic Norway, Alpine Journal 1899.)

 

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