NO CLIMBING AT THE MOMENT DUE TO CONFLICT WITH LAND OWNER.
Loven is a 150 meter wide cliff face with slightly overhanging routes up to 40 meters on immaculate rock. The wall faces north-northeast giving it shade most of the day, making it ideal in the summer half of the year.
The climbing is in general hard and sustained on a mix of crimps, underclings and slopey cracks with grades ranging from french 6`s to projects in the 9`s, with the majority being in the 7-8 range. For anyone climbing at these grades Loven is arguably one of the best walls in the country!
And if the quality of the rock and the routes wasn`t enough the location makes it even more special. Located just above a lake in a quiet picturesque valley on the west coast of Norway the ambience alone could be worth a visit for all but the most spoiled Norwegians.
Loven was first discovered by Pål Stillesby as he was driving between Oslo and Bergen. The quality of the wall was so good that despite it`s distance from both Oslo and Bergen eager climbers and developers from both cities just had to go. The main development was during the early 2000`s (2002 - 2006) with Pål Stillesby as the most driven and active contributor. Since then a few projects have gone down, but several still await a first ascent. In 2012 the wizard himself, Adam Ondra, payed the crag a visit, climbed a few lines and tried a project. He didn`t manage it in the few days he had but suggested it might be as hard as 9a+ making it the hardest known project in the country outside of Flatanger to this day!
Located far from any big city, traffic at the crag was quite limited at first. Then a guidebook called Klatreperler came out in 2008 and put the crag on the map, not just for Norwegians, but also for international travellers.
This was not a problem for a long time, but as Norways popularity as a climbing destination grew with Adam`s many trips, more people started to show up.
This caused some friction with the local community for several reasons. Some visitors would drive too fast on the last gravel part of the road to the crag. The issue here being that this piece of road goes through the tiny village, basically just meters from some of the houses where children play and often run around blind corners and into the road.
Secondly, the nice and flat area directly below the wall seems like is a nice place to camp, so people did.
This however was a problem for the farmer living closest to the crag as his sheep came down at night for salt and sleep. He would sit watching and feeling that his sheep where to scared to come down with people there at all hours, especially if they brougth dogs... When one of his sheep then were found dead by the lake from a fall from the "camping" ledge directly below the wall his patience ran out.
It is unclear what actually happened, but in any case the farmer blamed the climbers for scaring his sheep of the cliff and started coming over to yell at anyone who came to climb scaring most people away. This led the local community in Sogndal, along with the climbing federation, to post news and put up posters banning climbing at the cliff untill the issues could be resolved.
This was in 2017 and since then there has been very little activity at the crag. Recently a big effort has been made to mend old wounds with the local community, make guidelines everyone can agree on and officially re-open the wall for climbing again. Papers where drawn up and for a time this was looking very promising, but then a few young climbers made some Adamesque powerscreams at just the wrong time, and since then the progress has halted somewhat.
At the moment the access issues are still unresolved, but hopefully we will all get to enjoy this amazing wall once again in the not to distant future as long as everyone behaves, follows the yet to be determined guidelines and in general behave respectfully towards the locals. Once that happens we will update the topo, but untill then, please be patient and wait.
