Assignment 3

Assignment 3

Hovden Snowhole Trip

  • When: 22.03- 26.03.2021
  • Where: Hovden
  • What: 5 days Skitrip with sleeping in a snowhole and selfmade shelters
  • 3 words, that describe the experience the best: digging, reindeers, fun!!
  • My Orange (best moment): Sawing the ice blocks
  • My Lemon (worst moment): headache
  • What i want to improve on: being more focused

Summary of what I learned:

  • Weather: Clouds
    • Cirrus: high up, thin
    • Cumulous: fluffy, sheep, on sunny day
    • Cirrus stratus: covers the whole sky
    • Cumulonimbus: storm clouds
    • Altostratus: mid-level, gray/blue-gray, covers the whole sky, can be a sign for a storm
    • Lenticular: looks like a lens, rainbow colours
  • Direction of bearing:
    • east: sun rises
    • south: high up
    • west: sun sets
    • north: never
    • south-facing hills= less snow, more rocks
    • moss on the trees is always facing north
  • avalanches:
    • using ski poles to estimate the degrees of the hill
    • under rocks: more than 30 degrees
    • black slopes: 25-30 degrees
    • avalanche prone areas: under rocks, on convex zones,
  • Snow holes:
    • At least 2m depth of snow
    • There are different ways of building snow holes:
      1. Igloos: shuffle snow on 6 people or build snow blocks and close the roof
      2. Igloos: build up the roof with snow blocks (picture)

 

It was my favourite trip so far!!! We stayed in two huts surrounded by a lake and snowy hills. The first two days we went out for skiing and got thaught about the weather and maps and compass. We did one big tour where everyone of the group needed to lead the group at least once. It was not easy to find out on which hill we actually were, and it took so long to inform every group member where we were on the map. The snowy landscape was beautiful, and during lunch we had an amazing view on the mountains. We could even observe a herd of reindeers in far distance. The run down was challenging and so much fun. I really liked that we got thought about avalanches and how it feels when you find a person with your avalanche probe underneath the snow.

On the next day we skied to the next mountain and learned how to build snow igloos. It was really satisfying to saw the big snow blocks and see how the inside of the hole grew. It took us 6 hours but finally we felt asleep by listening to a fairy tale told by  Asger. Comparing sleeping in a snow hole to a selfmade shelter it was definitely warmer but less space. Building the shelters only with tarp and rope was a lot of fun and it was so cool to see how creative every group was. We spent the evening around a big  camp fire and told stories.

I’m so glad that we were able to do the snowhole trip with enough snow and good weather conditions. That’s something I would have never experienced at home and I really enjoyed spending so many nights out in the snow.         ,.-