Splitboarding in the Arctic might as well be a Schedule II drug—highly addictive, potentially dangerous, with a severe risk of psychological and neurological dependance. At least, that’s how it feels from where I sit now, amidst the bleak peaks of Tahoe. It’s been a lackluster year in the Sierra. And as spring rolls around, the desire for a proper adventure—one ideally fueled by reindeer stew and tinged in aurora borealis green—makes my teeth clench like the dope just wore off.
I got my first taste for the Gnarctic in the spring of 2023, on an Upguides and Stranda trip to the Tarfala hut, located at the foot of Sweden’s tallest mountain, the Kebnekaise. It was there I befriended Fred Buttard, an IFMGA guide and fun-loving Frenchman who splits time between splitboarding, skiing and, if the snow is deep enough, powsurfing.
After gorging ourselves on powder and reindeer for a week in Sweden, Buttard mentioned in passing that he hoped to start a splitboard festival the coming winter in Finnmark, a zone in northern Norway he’d been exploring for the past 15 years. I’d never heard of the place. The draw of the zone, he explained, was the sheer magnitude of the terrain. Not to mention the lack of crowds compared to more famous touring hubs like the Lyngen Alps and Lofoten Islands—places I had heard of.
“The terrain, you wouldn’t believe it. And there’s no one there,” he said happily. And no, there are no polar bears, either, he assured me.
While I was stoked to hear about a lack of bloodthirsty ICEE mascots, I didn’t need much convincing. I was riding the high of my Arctic debut, juiced on the psychedelic northern lights, the sizzling saunas, the surprisingly steep Swedish couloirs around the Tarfala hut.
“Fuck it, I’m in,” I said.
Over the next year, I excitedly watched the event come together from afar, materializing into a gathering of international shredders with demos from Scandinavian board brands, promise of boat-accessed couloirs and fjord-side faces, all fueled by hearty Norwegian cuisine. In April of 2024, I found myself heading to Norway for my second helping of Scandinavian shred at the first-ever Arctic Split Fest, hoping to scratch this new itch for lofty latitudes and the adventure that comes with ’em.
To reach those high latitudes, I fired up SkyScanner—a search engine that scrapes the web for cheap flights—to book my multileg passage. I ended up with a so-called “hack fare,” flying to Norway on one airline and home on another. Everything, at the time, seemed par for the course. It wasn’t.
My flight to Norway was normal enough—save for the British woman next to me on her way to a funeral who offered me some weed gummies. I declined. Despite the veritable overdose of drug references above, I’m about as straight-edge as the sidecut (or lack thereof) on a pair of 220 centimeter straight skis. Besides, I had just started watching Oppenheimer, and ruminating on nuclear fallout at 35,000 feet while high as balls seemed mildly irresponsible. After a marathon of flights, I eventually touched down in Alta, Norway, got picked up by the Upguides crew and kicked off three weeks of radical fjord boarding.
On the hour-long drive from the teeny Alta airport to the fjord-side hamlet of Langfordbotn, I was immediately blown away. I ogled rippable roadside terrain, endless mountains, fjord upon snaking fjord. Had the Brit in 28B slipped me a gummy after all? Maybe it was just delirium—four flights will do that to a man—but I felt like I’d stumbled into heaven. Over the days that followed, I realized I had.
What Buttard couldn’t possibly convey in his heavily accented English—and what even photos and videos don’t translate—is the magic of this zone. Winding roads snake alongside fjords dotted with classically minimalistic Norwegian cabins, leading you to couloirs that spill into the sea. Inaccessible cirques open up by boat like moonflowers in the night. (You can take a mix of public ferries and bumps from local fishermen to access lines that are rarely, if ever, skied.) From the summit of one line, to paraphrase the great Jeremy Jones, you spy 20 more.
If you saw any of my social media coverage of the event last year on Backcountry’s Instagram (which, if you’re not already, go ahead and hit that follow button), you know the festival was a blast.
Splitboarders, mostly from Europe, but also Canada, the States and Japan, flocked to Finnmark for a few days of shredding, demos, gear talks and good times. Highlights included 30-deep party waves down windlip-laden faces, boathouse barbeques of whale meat and reindeer (I’m not much of a whale guy, it turns out) and post-shred saunas interspersed with cold plunges in the fjord.
Some learning went down, too. Former Backcountry splitboard tester and Crested Butte avalanche educator Whitney Gilliam waxed on human factors. Pro ripper and Norwegian national treasure Krister Kopala shared a few short films, too, and gave a presentation on a few of his recent lines—if you can call them that. A hulking hardbooter who looks like he skinned straight out of a Norse myth, Kopala’s currently pushing the limits of splitboarding in the steeps arguably more than anyone else on the planet right now. His speedometer maxes out somewhere between the speed of sound and speed of light. The man rides classic mountaineering routes for breakfast and first descents for dinner, linking harrowingly narrow ribbons of snow between mandatory rappels.
Krister Kopala will be back at this year’s Arctic Split Fest, too, showing his new eponymous film.
On a down day, Kopala led an anchor-building workshop. Hanging off a bank of snow on the side of the community center parking lot that doubles as the Split Fest’s shred quarters, we built anchors out of branches, then sticks, then twigs, trying to see just how small of an anchor would facilitate a rappel. When the tiniest of twigs would break, the unlucky tester would go sprawling ass first down the bank to a chorus of laughter. We even rappelled off of an apple and a granola bar (neither of which, I’d say, you should trust your life to if you find yourself following Kopala down one of his insane projects).
After the festival, I stuck around with Buttard, embarking on a 10-day, point-to-point expedition through the fjords with an avalanche course he was co-instructing for Alta Folkehogskole, a local folk school that specializes in gap years for grown-ups. We got dropped off in the middle of nowhere by a ferry, then began a pulk sled odyssey through a series of valleys that looked as if they had been drawn by a daydreaming powderhound. We set up camp beneath picturesque lines, collected water from meltwater creeks, nerded out on the state of the snowpack, ate reindeer stews and rode couloir after featured face after couloir. I’ll never forget surfing our way down to sea level at sunset, the ripples of the fjord textured like hammer-beaten armor, gilded and glowing in the sun’s rays.
The whole trip was a highlight of my winter—a highlight of my backcountry life, really. If Sweden sparked the flames of my newfound addiction, Norway piled on the logs.
After three action-packed weeks in Finnmark, my legs absolutely thrashed and my cup overflowing, I checked in for my flight home. What I found was unexpected, to say the least, and confusing. My flight from Oslo to San Francisco (SFO) departed on April 28th, 2024, but there was a return flight, from SFO to Oslo, scheduled for February 3rd, 2025. What the hell? I certainly hadn’t picked this whacky itinerary.
The only explanation? The robotic travel agents at SkyScanner calculated that the cheapest flight they could find had three legs, not two. This made no sense to me, but alas, I don’t think in ones and zeros. Regardless, thanks to this hack fare, eight months later, I had a flight booked back to Oslo. Maybe, just maybe, it was a sign that my return to the Arctic was imminent. At the very least, the website seemed to be enabling my new obsession with splitboarding in the Arctic.
This whole situation became a bit of a joke, a story I’d tell friends that ended with “So I have this random flight to Oslo on February 3rd!” At times, I even forgot about the flight completely, seeing as I had no plans to visit Norway so early in the season. If I returned, I reckoned, I’d return to Finnmark in spring for Arctic Split Fest (I imagine many of the friends and touring partners I made last year will be returning, too) to keep exploring this incredible zone. Even after three weeks, plenty of miles traveled and vertical feet shredded, I knew I’d barely scratched the surface.
Soon enough, February 3rd rolled around. An alert went off on my calendar. “Oh shit! I’ve got to change my flight!” I exclaimed. I still didn’t have a backcountry adventure lined up for spring, my favorite time of the year to tour. I quickly checked the Arctic Split Fest website for this year’s dates, and a few hours before I was supposed to board, I changed my flight. I take off at the end of March and couldn’t be more hyped. I still don’t have a return flight booked, but I’m hoping to hang in Norway for as long as possible. Besides, I’ll just use SkyScanner for that later. Who knows? Maybe I’ll score another bonus flight for next year.
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