What: Self Organised Forest Field Trip-Winter Cross Country Skiing
When: February 19th-22nd, 2018
Where: Sloaros i Setesdal & Hovden area
This was our second cross country trip since beginning this course and our first self/ student organized trip. No guide, no professor, just me, a few classmates, a 70L bag on my back and skis. I had never done something like this before especially coming from the state of Nebraska.
Our initial plan was to start on Monday morning, camp in tents the first two nights, a cabin the third night and then head back down the mountains the last day and be back in Kristiansand Thursday. Like usual, life had other plans. We started in Hovden as planned- it is about 3.5 hours on a bus from Kristiansand. Hovden is a very popular downhill skiing area with cabins surrounding it. It is beautiful and there are many cross country skiing trails starting at the bottom of Hovden and leading up to higher points of the mountains. You can do shorter day trips or do long hauls where you ski hut to hut. Hut to hut means you have a set trail to follow that can be anywhere from 5km to 20km until you reach the first hut or cabin. We wanted to camp in tents the first two nights to get used to it and be aware that we need to keep everything dry for the following night.
So our trip. Like i mentioned, we started in Hovden. It took us quite some time to figure out where the beginning trail of Sloaros started. We were only planning on doing 5km that day since we arrived mid-day, so we had time. I really felt that I had gotten much better at uphill skiing and just skiing in general. This first day I was leader of the pack and was booking it up the hill. Being in front almost gives you an extra boost of adrenaline and I just felt in the zone. There were many steep hills we had to climb this day. If this was back in Evje I would have looked at that hill and dreaded it, but this time I was excited. I waxed my skis (almost too well) but herringbowed my way up quickly which was nice as it gave me some extra time at the top to get some pictures and catch my breathe while waiting for the others. (The pictures never do the beauty of the mountains or the steepness of hills justice)
From starting in Hovden to finding a spot to camp out in total it was probably around 7 or 8km. We could have gone further but it was around 5pm and starting to get dark, cold and the wind was rapidly picking up. We found a nice spot about 200 meters away from the track. The spot was flat but pretty deep with snow so we used our skis and shovels to pack the snow down so it would be a solid platform for our tents. This didn’t take long and we got our tents up pretty quick. We had two tents for 7 people- a 3 man tent and a 4 man tent so that worked out perfectly. Once settled, we all got in one tent and made a nice dinner on the storm kitchen. We all decided to take turns on dinner this week. The first night was our Hungarian friends and they made a delicious traditional Hungarian meal consisting of potatoes, veggies and sausage.
It was filling and just what we needed to warm us up before bed. By this time the wind had picked up quite a bit and the temperature had dropped to around -18 degrees Celsius. The only thing we wanted to do was get in our sleeping bags but going into your sleeping bag cold usually just makes you stay cold so we took laps around the tent and some jumping jacks to warm up. We then hopped in our sleeping bags doing our best to stay warm. We realized it was only 7 in the evening at this point but all did our best to try to sleep since it was too cold to do much else. I was probably laying there for 4 hours before finally drifting off. That didn’t last long because a few hours later I woke up to rustling outside the tent. At first I just thought it was the wind blowing on our tent but after listening and hearing heavy breathing I realized it was a reindeer! Instead of waking the others up I decided to ignore it and go back to sleep. I would have loved to go see it but the wind was crazy and the knowing how cold it was outside of the tent kept me bundled up in my sleeping bag. After a restless and cold sleep we all woke up to an extraordinary sunrise in the mountains making the cold sleep worth it. 
We all had a filling breakfast, quickly packed up our equipment and tents and we were once again off on our skis. The plan today was to ski around 10km to get to the DNT (also known as the Norwegian Trekking Association in English). A DNT is a cabin that is usually unlocked and there are hundreds all in the mountains of Norway. If you are a member you can freely access any cabin in Norway for a discounted price. I’ll talk more about DNT huts in my next blog. This 10km treck started off good with more uphills and a lot of flat trails as well. A couple hours went by and we were certain we didn’t have many more kilometers til we reached our destination. We were wrong. We got to a junction with a sign indicating that Sloroas Hytte was still about 10km away. We lucked out as a family was coming down a hill while we were trying to decide on our next move. They said that the trail to Sloroas was closed as well as the hut due to a numerous amount of reindeer. At this point a classmate had been feeling sick the majority of the trip and once we found out that it was closed she was ready to just head home. We said we didn’t mind splitting up if the rest wanted to go a different route but everyone was keen on sticking together. At this point we were about 8km from being back in Hovden. It was mostly downhill so we estimated it shouldn’t take us more than 2 hours to reach the bottom. We collectively agreed as a group to cut the trip (very) short. My skis were still fairly sticky from the previous day so it was quite interesting going downhill as my skis had too much grip and not enough slide to them. I fell quite a bit. Towards the end it was straight downhill and too fast and slippery on the track for the others so they went off piste. I separated from them to stay on the track as it was perfect for my sticky skis.
All in all the weather conditions and snow conditions were great. The snow was perfect for skiing as there was no ice. The weather temperatures stayed nice during the days as well. I only had one layer because i get pretty hot pretty fast especially if we are doing a lot of uphill climbing. Also it was our first time carrying our large 70L + packs on our backs whilst cross country skiing. Its challenging and definitely makes a difference when going both downhill and uphill. But the views were spectacular and just got better the higher we went. Being surrounded by nothing but mountains and pure white snow is amazing.