Norway’s Lofoten Islands rise abruptly out of the North Sea to more than 3,500 feet. The densely packed archipelago curves southward like an eagle’s talon poised above the Arctic Circle. A haven for sea birds, including puffins in the hundreds of thousands, the Lofotens also host the world’s largest orca gathering. It’s a remote and dramatic landscape, one of the best places in the world for sea kayaking, and for a certain kind of skiing.
To free-skiing kayakers Ian Watson, Andreas Fransson, Fredrik Anderson and Patrik Lindqvist, the islands offered a synthesis of skiing and paddling. Sea kayaks are the perfect vehicle to access these mountain islands, and also fit the team’s self-powered hard-guy aesthetic. After all, these aren’t your typical resort skiers; these are people who climb for hours for a few turns in untracked snow. Not that the kayaks’ load-carrying charm was lost on the alpinists. “This was the strangest and best way I’ve ever begun a ski-touring mission,” Watson says of the day last March when the four men shoehorned backcountry skis, mountaineering and camping gear, plus a week’s provisions into their kayaks. “We’re used to carrying all of this on our backs.”