It has been plenty of weeks of training now and we were finally ready for the real thing: The mountain safety field trip! This trip included not only skiing but also building snow holes and sleeping in them. The task now was simple, plan 4 days considering the first night will be at a hut and the last one in an emergency shelter which shouldn’t be too far from the bus that takes us home.

In order to have good group sizes during the day trips we got divided into two groups of eight people each. With things settled like this we could begin the planning.

Location:

Due to warm weather we had to change the destination from Hovden to Ljosland. Thanks to websites as varsom.no and others we could have an eye on the snow conditions as we were planning. They have employees going out every day to check the avalanche danger and the snow quality. For some in our group this was the first hurdle, an unknown environment for such a big. Luckily their doubts faded away as the rest of the group showed huge passion and kindled them with their fire. Here the group members with a more socio-emotional role definitely came in handy.

Routes:

A group of eight people has many different characters and of course different goals when it comes to physical activities. On one side we needed to calm down the highly motivated guys to not choose a route that was overestimating the group’s power. On the other hand it needed sensitivity to encourage the doubting ones in the group that the chosen route will be good to handle. In my opinion many of us showed and understanding of risk behavior in this situation, since we managed to decrease the dangers through planning and informing ourselves about the area and the group.

In cooperation with the other group we decided on spots to stay for the night. This discussion went really quick since we all agreed on the same standards (sheltered from the wind, reachable on skis …).  After that it was basically just getting the grid references for our trip and writing the route plan. This was done by only two in our group which was a bit sad. I think it would have been a great opportunity for the rest to refresh their knowledge in doing these things. Unfortunately these two worked together so well, it was impossible to join in. Another downside of the planning occurred in the second session: One group member of ours could only join in on that session and no one really bothered on informing her about our plans. I tried my best to get her up to date but found it really impolite myself from the rest of our group. Normally this shouldn’t happen when you’re leading a group since it is something you plan on your own but regarding the team spirit this was quite a draw back.