Troll slayer! Europe’s tallest vertical rock face gets skied

Normally home to extreme rock climbers, lunatic base jumpers and crows – Norway’s infamous Troll Wall – Trollveggen, has finally been conquered. This time by a skier.

With 55 to 60 degrees face, Europe’s steepest lump of granite is an intimidating foe especially when going straight down.

Spanish skier Kilian Jornet felt he was the man for the job and after clicking-in tackled the shear vertical wall with a 1,100m gradient in the Romsdalen valley.




Kilian achieved the feat back in 2018 but the full length video has just been released (above)

Pedants might argue that he didn’t technically skiing the whole way down, but abseiling while still wearing skis certainly definitely deserves more than the usual pat on the back.

The Spaniard is the first to go straight, straight down on a set of skies

The poplar region is home to extreme climbers going up and base jumper going down…well hopefully diagonally down but the Spaniard is the first to go straight, straight down on a set of skies. Jornet began to think about his descent two years ago, when he moved to the area.

“The upper section is perhaps the most complicated, as they are probably the most vertical 200m that I have ever skied. Following that, there was quite a narrow couloir of 400m and then 100m of more skiable sections, but which were very icy and steep in parts. It’s a very exposed route where you have to fully concentrate, but in the end the result was very satisfactory” Kilian said on his blog.

Every year the boundaries of what is possible in human endeavour gets pushed back further and further. who knows where the next limit might be challenged.

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