Mr Freeze

Our camp

Just back from a three day trip to Rondane, I'm lounging in the sofa, catching up on my favourite blogs. Friday evening, Prince Charming and I drove up to Rondane with skis and a tent. We arrived at the parking lot around midnight and pitched the tent right there as we were too tired to start the work of treading the snow to make a camp spot nearby. After a night of not very good sleep we got off to a bad start of our trip. I had been in Rondane four years ago but couldn't for my bare life recognise where the track started. As this is a very popular crosscountry area there were tracks everywhere! We looked at the map and decided it had to be the track going east. After about 30 minutes we realized we were wrong and a nice lady told us we had to ski all the way back to where we started from and then take a right. Oh shame! The weather was great and skiing conditions perfect so moral was still high. We found the right track and had skied another 10 minutes when we discovered we were three minutes from the far end of our parking lot. Had we walked across it (instead of skiing around it) the distance was only about 500 meters from our car... Well, well. I then realized why I didn't recognize the track to start with. We were standing by the upper parking lot (yes, there are two) which was obviously the one we had parked at four years ago. So, we had just spent over one hour to get to where we could have parked. The rest of the trip went along well, though.




We planned to ascend Rondeslottet on day 2, but the conditions for summits weren't great, as you can see below.

Prince Charming and the shadow of my big, black mitt.

We ended up skiing down in the valley for a short trip, stopping to have lunch and chocolate (yummy!). There, we met 10 British people on their first ski trip ever. It was their second day skiing and they had a considerable way to go to reach the cabin of their destination. All though we had to laugh a bit of their (lack of) technique I have to say I am very impressed with them. When skiing with no technique at all, skiing is very tiresome and these people were skiing a normal days distance for an experienced skier. They must have been so tired only half way. That is a true feat!

(The dots are the group of Brits)

The next day we awoke very early - 5.20 am. Since we went to sleep just after dark, probably around 8 pm the night before we decided to go up and by the time we had finished breakfast it was light outside. We took down the tent and packed the camp up and started skiing back where we came from. After having crossed the lake (see the stunning view below) we stopped for a short break at the tourist cabin the Brits were going to the night before. And yes, they started the leg of the day just as we sat there. They skied on the other side of the valley so we never actually passed them. But after a while they disappeared in the distance behind us. All of my respect goes to these people. True success only comes through ordeal.

Me. (The thing on my stomach is a map case.)