Viking Open Canyon (Norway), Bestard Mountain Boots

Viking Open Canyon – Bestard Mountain Boots

Text and photos by Daniel Planells

Since we started the explorations in the Scandinavian country, the trust between the “Viking Open Canyon” project and the “Bestard Mountain Boots” brand have been mutual, being also increased with each expedition.

We have had the opportunity to test and use several models of footwear from the Bestard Mountain Boots brand. In 2019 we tested the Bestard Wildwater Pro canyoning boots with an excellent result for us. Good grip inside the barrels and comfort in approaches and returns.

In the year 2020 the mythical Bestard Canyon Guide were the ones we wore every day to carry out our openings. Personally for me they are the best boots on the market without a doubt. In addition to comfort, and the quality of the material, for us the grip to the ankle and the protection it offers to our watertight socks that we usually carry on this type of expedition. Since they prevent us from between gravel, or any element that can damage the material. In the year 2021, in addition to continuing with our Bestard Mountain Boots brand canyoning boots, we had the opportunity to wear the Bestard Terra mountain shoes.

Personally for me they are the best boots on the market without a doubt

We thank the Bestard Mountain Boots brand for the trust placed in our Project from the beginning.

Viking Open Canyons project

Since the prehistoric times, human beings have always sought to explore new territories, and discover places that no one had ever visited. Few places where man has not travelled, seen and visited, but the feeling of exploration we still have, and therefore we want to continue looking for new incognito corners. In our case, that search for unknown places are carried out in the ravines, canyons and waterfalls in Norway, under the name “Viking Open Canyon”.

In our name “Viking Open Canyon”, the word “Viking” is the most important for us, since it comes from the old word “Vikingo” and that means “going on an expedition.” But we don’t conquer countries like they did the ancient Vikings, but we are going to explore new ravines, canyons and waterfalls, so we added “Open Canyon”.

In September 2019, the first of the 5 expeditions was carried out in the Scandinavian country. On this first trip, we visited the north of Norway, located within the arctic circle. Being the Gorzi waterfall, and the Gorsa canyon (deepest canyon in Northern Europe) was what aroused our interest in beginning to explore ravines in this country.

Once we landed in that wonderful place, we could observe that there were many more ravines to explore than the ones we had studied from home. Wherever you looked there was a crack in the mountain through which the water drained some lake or glacier. We had found an unspoiled paradise for ourselves as what we refer to the exploration of canyons.
A total of 16 explorations in 17 days of travel. Caudalous ravines with dangerous water movements, large verticals, ravines boxed in with formations unknown to us. And even nature gave our eyes the vision of beautiful northern lights, reindeer, dolphins in the fjords, etc… Every day our smile, joy and happiness were vaster.

Once that incredible expedition was over, it was clear to us that we were going to return the following year to continue with the project. But our passion for discovering new places, led us to search from home, not just new ravines, but also some completely new places within the Scandinavian country. It was when we spot the imposing Geiranger Fjord. Once there in August 2020, we realized that the projects that we planned from home were going to take us much more work than imagined. Since the dimensions and spectacular nature of that fjord had nothing to do with the fjords we worked on the previous year. Noteworthy differences with respect to 2019 include: the logistics in terms of approaches, returns and even views of flows, since that we had to use aquatic vehicles, the first ravine we explored in a encased granite gorge (since the previous year the predominant type of cap was the schist), a small speleological journey with fluvial assets excavated in limestone and marble, and two large verticals of about 200 meters each inside two ravines with more rappels inside.

In summary, another great year of exploration that we had achieved in Norway. But with two small handicaps. The first one we want to emphasize is that it was the marked year of coronavirus and the restrictions meant that we could only travel 10 days to the country. And the second was that due to the rain, many of the days we were left without doing any exploration activity in the “interior of the canyons”. And I put in quotation marks the words “interior of the canyons”, because outside of them we were still working on our explorations, and we took the opportunity to prospect new ravines. Thanks to this, we discovered the Stryn Valley. This is a valley located a few kilometres from the Geiranger Valley. Stryn was where we would work on the following 3 subsequent expeditions.

In August 2021 we carried out the first expedition of 2021 to the valley of Stryn. From the first day we saw the great canyoning potential of that area, being many of the ravines of the glacial regime but also, crowned in its southern slope by the Josteldalsbreen glacier (the largest glacier in Europe continental). In this expedition it was possible to explore almost all the projects that we had studied from home, and best of all, most of the ravines explored (not to say all) contained some kind of inducement of which we are looking for, to consider it to be a good canyoning descent. sportsmanship, commitment, difficulty, beauty.

At the level of exploration we can consider that it was the best of the 5 expeditions that we had carried out in Norway

A second team of “Vikings Open Canyon” returns to the Stryn area two months later to continue exploring. In addition, this expedition was the first to which we had a drone (Not only to obtain good images, but to use it in the canyons prospecting).

The highlight of this trip apart from the incorporation of the drone has been the opening of one of the best ravines of all that we have explored. Even so, our desire to enter canyons in which the flows are extremely high throughout the year, makes us want to make another expedition in the year 2021. Specifically at the beginning of December, when the cold begins to freeze glaciers and lakes, and beginning to diminish the flow that springs from them. But on this occasion a mismatch occurred outside of our control, (THE COMPANY AIRLINE LOST ALL LUGGAGES AND TOOK THREE DAYS TO ARRIVE). Once we have recovered the material, we only had two days of exploration that we were able to invest to open canyons in extreme winter conditions with an affordable flow in one of the cases and practically null in the other.

In short, we have a total of 43 openings in the country, but there are still many more to go expediting to this wonderful place by the Viking Open Canyon team. Passion and the desire to continue exploring do not cease on our part, on the contrary, they are increasing. So we hope we can continue to pay tribute to the word VIKING that right now represents us.

Daniel Planells Mora