Niemisel

The crag is located at the hill Snipen close to the village Niemisel. The rock are overhanging and almost 25 meters high at its highest point and are facing southwest. The climbing are, by swedish means, very continous and offer a lot of routes of hard endurance routes. Its by far the best crag for hard sportclimbing in the north of Sweden. As a standalone sector it could probably even be one of the top 3 crags in the country.

Almost every name of the routes are painted at the base which make it easy to find the climb you are looking for.

Season

The best conditions are found during clear, sunny days in March to April and September/October. In May the cliff will usualy be very wet due to snowmelting on the top of the hill. In the summer we recommend to hit the crag in the early morning when its still in the shadow or nightclimbing in June.

Mosqitos are common so dont forget your bugspray.

Its possible to climb during light rain and the cliff dries up quickly after rain. After a longer period of heavy rain it could take a few days for the cliff to dry.

Staying here

There are a rent free hut by the river "Långforsen". Between the parking by the crag and the village just follow signs down towards "Fornlämning" and "Långforsen N". Park near the trail and walk 400m down to the river. Here you have a sauna and a dry toilet next to the hut. There are plenty of space to set up a tent. Good to know that the hut is not mosquito proof so tent are prefered in June/July.

Please just stay a couple of nights at the time and always bring your garbage home.

In the early 1990 three climbers approached Niemisel to search for a crag that may be possible to climb. When they reached the cliff they were stunned. A overhanging, horrifying piece of pure granit struck them. The three friends were the skilled, Kari Nikumaa (Östersund)and the more enthusiastic Anders Björkén (Luleå)and Anders Eliasson (Boden). The MTV wall at "Snipen" in Niemisel were found!

Kari started at the most obvious crack in the highest part of the crag and estabished "Great balls of fire". Björkén and Eliasson were more cautious and cleaned "Beavis" in the beginning of the crag.

After this first discovery in 1993 more and more routes were established. In the summer of 1996 Jens Larsen visited the north of Sweden and established a few routes shorter routes at the lower, west end of the crag.

During the years almost every skilled climber in Sweden have visited the mythical crag in the north that contains a bunch of routes in the upper grades.

In 2018 the swedish star Matilda Söderlund almost did a clean sweep of the crag by repeating almost every route in just a few days.