Haugastøl and kiting


Last Thursday, Pancho and I took the train to Haugastøl where Idar's family has a cabin. Idar arrived by train about an hour after us, so Pancho and I helped ourselves in the cabin first. Since it was already getting dark, we spent the evening watching movies and vanlife videos on youtube.

Friday we woke up to overcast, but lots of powdery snow, so Idar thought I would like to try randonee skiing...hiking up the hill with downhill skis on (with "skins" to get grip) to ski back down. More my style downhill skiing to avoid the busy alpine resorts and my fear of crashing into people. However, the skis he thought I could borrow did not have skins that would fit for them, so I had to use a pair of cross-country skis that were barely wider than mine and were technically called mountain skis...a load of bull haha The wax wasn't working for me to go uphill, and the skis were too skinny for me to navigate the downhill. Don't get me wrong, I had fun even though I fell a lot, but it was not fun when I couldn't get back out of the deep snow drifts. Pancho also found it exhausting. Having to wear glasses that weekend was an added handicap.

That night, Idar's friend Bertil arrived and we had a late dinner and played games. Saturday we decided to try snow kiting. Usually you use the kite to pull you on downhill skis, but as I am too inexperienced with downhill skiing I opted to just try to get the kite up and maneuver it while standing still. Idar had to hold the handle behind the harness so that I wouldn't get lifted up too high in the air from the kite. The wind just wasn't consistent enough to do much and my toes began to get very cold, so we packed up and went back for dinner.

After a little time relaxing we decided to take a night cross-country ski trip on some prepared tracks. Prepared with charged up headlamps, we headed out. The conditions were great! Much more my kind of snow activity, and Pancho preferred the prepared tracks as well. I decided to turn around before the guys to get a head start on the downhill and after about 100 meters heading downhill, the cold made my headlamp go out. I saw nothing. I stopped and yelled, but I don't know if they heard me, so I continued down the path cautiously and eventually they caught up to me and Idar had to light the way for all three of us. We survived!

Sunday I decided to stay at the cabin, pack up and sit in the sun while the guys went on another ski trip with Pancho. It was a beautiful sunny day. This has happened to me every time I have gone to the cabin at Haugastøl and Geilo...always a beautiful sunny Sunday.

P.S. Monday I got lasik surgery and now I don't need glasses or contact lenses anymore! Went much better than I could have hoped.

Pancho the Polar Explorer

A bit of gear to unpack for snow kiting.

Digging out a shelter from the wind.



Idar got the kite up, Pancho is slightly concerned


Pancho is making sure that Bertil doesn't fly away.

Cross-country skiing in the dark.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Smalahove

Image
Many Norwegian traditions are distinctly regional. Even recipes are variable by region to go along with dialects that can be different by town separated by just 50 kilometers. This tradition, that both Marius and I were new to trying, was from a town just about an hour and a half east of Bergen called Voss....smalahove, or half of a sheep's head that is cooked in a broth for several hours. Smalahove comes from two Norwegian words: smale = sheep, and hove = head. It is served before Christmas with potatoes, mashed rutabaga, and red cabbage. Many of my friends were telling me that the cheek is supposed to be the best part, and others were saying that they wouldn't dare eat it. So I can now say that I have done something that many other Norwegians haven't dared try. I actually really enjoyed it! It had a texture like corned beef and had a very nice flavor. Marius went as far as to try the tongue, and thought that eating the eye was a normal thing, so tried that as well...bu...
Read more

In case you missed it, I moved back to Bergen

Image
But only temporarily, as of yet. In the beginning of the month I took the train from Oslo to Bergen. It was a beautiful trip cross-country ascending to over 1000m above sea level and back down again. My friend Knut said that I could stay at his place until an apartment was available to rent. I picked up the key from his mom, dropped off my things, and went back downtown to go to my Norwegian course. He was out of town for the week for work, and my first day of work was not until the following Monday. So I used the next five days reacquainting myself with Bergen....mainly by running around my old neighborhood. On Monday (Nov 10) I started my new (tempoary) part time job at UniResarch Sars International Centre for Marine Molecular Biology...UniSars for short. Technically I am called a "research technician", but I'm more like a glorified dishwasher at the moment. I made sure to tell the researchers that I am more than capable to help them if they need an extra pa...
Read more

FIFA 2010 South Africa

Image
FIFA 2010 kicked off on June 11 and today, New Zealand will today make a return to the world’s greatest football stage exactly 28 years to the day since their FIFA World Cup debut. The All Whites will take on Slovakia at 11PM (New Zealand time). It is hard to say whether it will be a good game or not; however, the fact that NZ is in the world cup for the first time in so long is enough of a reason to stay up so late. Saturday morning was the big USA vs. England match. The Americans are so happy with a tie that the New York Post had this as its front page: The time difference makes it a bit hard to keep up with seeing the games, but it's always fun to rub in the fact that the British tied the US in their first World Cup game this year to some British friends. Next exam is Saturday for Invertebrate Diversity. And only 20 days to go til Thailand!!
Read more