My Favourite Place On Earth

Romsdalen is the best place I know. You can hike, climb, ski, kayak, boulder or do anything else you can think of when it comes to outdoorsy stuff. But I'm not really ready to leave the city yet and relocate. Maybe in 3-4 years? I'd love a summer house though. To afford one I'd have to win the lottery. And I'm trying real hard to do just that. Once a week, every week. I can't believe I didn't win this Saturday either!

"Things don't get any better than this"...

...was my mantra this weekend. The first real weekend of sun and warmth and I was so lucky I spent it in the mountains. My friend invited me up to a ski resort called Hemsedal for the weekend. When I saw the weather forecast reported 8-10 degrees Celcius and a big sun symbol I had no doubts about going.

I drove up on Friday night and arrived as my friend King S started making dinner. What a luxury! We didn't start Saturday too early since the night before saw many a glass of red wine and discussions about life. But it's now day light nearly 'till 9 pm so we weren't in a rush. Started off on the ski touring in the slightly wrong place so we ended up in rough terrain. It didn't matter that much because the weather was so great anyway!

Once we were above the tree line things were just so easy! We cruised all the way to the top even though it was a bit further than expected. And the ride down was fantastic! Watch King S ski Telemark (free heel) below!

The next day was even better. Another late start due to our After Ski but it turned into another amazing day:

(All photos by King S or me.)

Nothing's like spring time ski touring!

Came back from the best weekend ski mountaineering with my friend King S. I'll tell you more later, now I have to run off to work. Enjoy the photos for now!

2nd Half of Easter

Saturday the weather was stunning. We decided to go ski mountaineering in spite of my cold. The summit for the day was to be Vorfjellet / Vårfjellet, a local mountain near my parents' house. The photo above is by Y, you can see the summit behind the cottage. We skied both up and down the slope to the right. Not too long a trip but a very nice hill back down. This is actually the first mountain I ever ski mountaineered to! Y used snowshoes to carry her snowboard up, Prince Charming had Randonee equipment and I Telemark (loose heel skiing). Y had a bit of trouble snowboarding out the valley after the descent but you come a long way with a little help from your friends (and my Dad)!

Sunday looked a bit gloomy in the start but the weather only got better and better. A very thin carpet of clouds was covering the sky, creating a magical light. The snow covered scenery was like a fairytale land!

2nd day of Easter (Easter Monday) is a public holiday here in Norway. We wanted to get more out of the day than being stuck in traffic trying to get back to Oslo. So we decided to go skiing in the morning before the ride back. The woods were really fun to ski in with the trees spaced perfectly and with funny moss hanging from the branches. And the snow - oh, the snow! I don't think I've ever skied in such perfect conditions in the mountains before. Powder to the knee. What a great way to end a great vacation!

Back to work

A weekend in the mountains is over and it's back to work. I'll tell you more later but for now you'll have to settle with a photo from our ski mountaineering trip. Pictured is Prince Charming on skis and Y with snowshoes, carrying her snowboard.

Easter in Western Norway

Even though I have a bad cold we decided to go visit my parents like we had planned. Y, Prince Charming and I stuffed the Prince's Ford full of equipment for sleeping outdoors, cross country skis and ski mountaineering equipment. The drive normally takes 6-7 hours in the winter but this time the weather on the mountain was really bad. We had to wait 2 hours before we were allowed to cross. All the cars had to drive slowly with the hazard blinkers on, following the plough. We ended up spending 10,5 hours on the trip.



We quickly realized I was too sick to sleep outdoors in a tent and decided to stay based at my parents house and do day trips instead. The weather today was unstable and I didn't get much sleep last night so we decided to go skiing at the local resort. We had a bit of a rough start on the day but things turned out well and we got two excellent runs at the end of the day.


We ended a good day by training with our avalanche beacons. It's been a while since I trained with it so it was a good experience for all of us. All the photos above are by Y.

Winter atmosphere

I haven't posted in a few days and today's post won't be great either. But I'm hoping to come back with grandeur soon. For now I'll let you enjoy this winter photo from some years back, taken at Oppdal by A.

Back to work

Here's another photo from our Rondane trip.

After having worked all day and evening to catch up that is all I can give today.

Have a nice day!

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.)

Healthy Norwegian Youth (Sunn Norsk Ungdom)

Today Y and I went skiing in the woods around Oslo. You can take the subway for 40 minutes and you're in the woods. Oslo is a small city. Neither of us are any good at crosscountry skiing but we had a nice couple of hours skiing. It's really fun to watch all the other people out skiing so close to the city on a Sunday afternoon. The man pictured above is very classic and with that certain old style. You meet lots of old people out skiing on such a day. It's great that they keep in shape and spend time outdoors!

It's snowing!

Sepp Kober

This weekend we're going skiing! Actually, it's raining here right now, but it snowed earlier today. And right now I don't care whether it's snowing in the city, as long as it's snowing in the mountains! Hurray! Below you can see the weather forecast for the resort we're going to. And it has already snowed for a day. We're staying at a cabin that Prince Charming's work place owns.

Utsikter for Hallingskarvet Høyfjellshotell neste 48 timer:
Dagtemperatur fra -11 til -1, med nattetemperatur ned i -9 grader. Sterkeste middelvindstyrke kan bli frisk bris (10,6 meter per sekund) fra vest-sørvest (vinden kan bli langt sterkere i kastene). Vi venter totalt 24 mm nedbør.

I know the weather forecast is in Norwegian, but basically it's saying it'll be minus degrees the next 48 hours, but not too cold, a bit windy and a probably 20 - 30 cm of fresh snow! Tomorrow it'll snow a bit from the morning but calm down in the day, maybe with glimpses of sun. (It didn't actually say that above but Yr.no forecasts that too.) Sounds like a perfect weekend skiing to me!

All work and no play

I've only been working for over a week now and there's still one more hectic week to go. I'm leaving tomorrow to go abroad to work. I'm sure it's going to be a lot of fun, familiar faces, interesting but also very tiring. I probably won't be able to put up a proper post until the end of next week. Please bear with me! For now, you can enjoy this very cool photo taken by Prince Charming when he was skiing last weekend. Oh, envy, thou are so green and deep!

I cracked up and crumbled!

I stopped by the shopping centre to do an errand but I couldn't help myself and browsed H&M and Cubus for cheap t-shirts. I've wanted some oversize t-shirts since all mine are skin tight (more or less). I ended up with four(!). I am exchanging one that was tight and at full price from H&M (still very cheap, though) but am keeping the other three. One is a flared top discounted 70% at H&M, one is a normal orange skin tight t-shirt for NOK 30,- from Cubus and the last one is a white t-shirt in size XXL for NOK 30,- from Cubus. This photo from Emma Nygren's blog inspired me to get an oversized t-shirt. A great blog, by the way!

More pictures from New Year's

This is taken December 31st 2007 and we're on our way to the summit. The sun was actually warming which is very unusual at this time of year. It felt like Easter! Later on we had to take our skis off and carry them on our backpacks to the top because the wind the previous day had rendered the slopes rocky and with very little snow.

A New Year Has Begun!

Is there a better way to end a year than by a couple of days of ski mountaineering?

Prince Charming and I went to Hemsedal, a famous ski resort in Norway on Saturday to visit a friend that lives there. Another friend of us was already there, so that made four of us for the weekend.

Unfortunately I've only got photos from the first of our two skiing days. The battery of my camera went dead. The sun was shining but it was quite windy on Sunday. Monday was Easter-like with the sun actually warming and no wind at all. A friend took some photos on that second trip, so I'll try and post one when I get them. All the photos here are from the windy Sunday.

Prince Charming in the wind at the summit. I was standing behind the cairn which is a big pile of stones common on summits. It is to mark the summit and in earlier times it was a way to see what summits had been ascended. I was out of the wind since the cairn was so big so I just look rediculous with the big goggles and my neck gaiter pulled up high.

Skiing with the parents

http://www.omniphilprints.co.uk/index.php?f=data_prints&a=2

A Vintage Skiing Cartoon from Punch, or The London Charivari Dated 1929

with Recent Hand Colouring.

Skiing with my parents and their dogs was a very nice way of spending the day. We made a fire and brewed coffee under a pine tree and had a great time. Much better than running around in the shops!

A Great View

http://www.giroguies.com/islandpeakes.htm