Location: Setesdal East, Berdalsbu Areas

Winter Mountaineering / Snowhole Trip

April 1-3 (Tuesday-Thursday)

 

Describe the area in which the field trip took place: geography, flora, fauna.

The field trip took place in the mountains near Hovden.  The purpose of the trip was to improve our skiing skills, but mainly to construct a snowhole and then sleep in it for 2 nights.  After arriving by bus at the correct location and organizing ourselves into groups with the appropriately weighted packs, we could begin our 3 days of skiing.  The snow was more like ice and everyone knew the trip was not going to be easy within the first 5 minutes of arriving.  Despite being terrible snow, it was interesting to see how the snow’s structure changed over the day as it is gradually exposed to more sunlight and heat.  The snow was very hard, crusty and slippery in the morning but eventually melted to slushy soft snow later in the day.  There were stages along the trip where you felt as if you truly were in a winter wasteland with only you and your group members near by.  In terms of flora, there was not a great deal.  There were a lot of trees around but few with flourishing green leaves covering the branches.  We were skiing at 800 – 1150m and as we ascended in altitude, the sight of pine trees was replaced more with small shrubs and bushes.  There was also not much fauna either besides the birds flying around and the occasional deer track left behind.  Katrin, Sara, Amy, Erwan and Me were all very excited to begin the trip so we set off with Group A as quick as we could.

 

–       Did you achieve the goals for the trip, if not, explain ?

If there were any goals written down before the trip, I may have missed them because I was also away in Italy for when we planned our route and organized some key elements of the camp.  I never really laid out any official specific goals myself before my trip but I had some general aspirations and I felt like they were all met.

• I was educated on how to dig a snow hole
• I was apart of a team who successfully dug a snow hole
• This snow hole did not collapse and we slept in it for 2 nights
• I did not freeze to death
• I got to practice some more of my cross-country skiing
• I learnt some important survival techniques in the event of bad weather
• I was able to improve my leadership and teamwork skills
• I managed to make a breakfast that lasted 2 mornings

At the end of the trip reflection, perhaps I wish I learnt a little bit more about the area but I am extremely pleased with this trip and can say it has been my best trip so far.  I walked away from this trip having an experience that very few Australians can say they have.

 

–       What were your main challenges working in a winter environment ?

I love the cold and very rarely struggle in terms of temperature loss.  I brought the correct layers and followed the correct protocols to ensure I stayed warm, even when my bag straps froze out straight.  I feel that my main challenge was skiing on such terrible old icey snow.  I am not an incredibly proficient skier yet and these conditions definitely made getting around very difficult.  The skins made the skiing a lot easier but then when I wanted to glide and slide around on the ice I couldn’t because they gripped too much.  I thank Tim for allowing us to use them and I think the skiing would have been much harder without them but they still did not make the trip easy as a whole.

It was most noticeable for the members of our group in particular that snow hides many things, including large trees which can be in your way when trying to dig a snowhole.  We found this out the hard way when we hit a tree whilst digging our snowhole… We were probing around in the snow prior to digging the snowhole but clearly we missed the tree and otherwise, had no idea that something would obstruct our path once we had already dug 2m into the hill.  It was also very challenging trying to carve through the ice.  We were informed the harder the snow you are sleeping in, the safer you are from a collapse over night.  This helped our motivation as we didn’t feel we were wasting our time.  Once we got a little 1m wide, 2m long channel dug into the hill, it became very difficult to find a nice balance of work efficiency amongst the group so everyone could be doing something productive at the same time.  As we got deeper and started to build the T shape of the cave, it was a lot easier to get more than one person inside to help with the digging.  It was even easier when we started digging away at the shelves, even if we had to build our cave a little differently to the others due to our natural obstructions.  However, despite our various methods of trying to swap the members of the group around to maximize our efficiency, it was still quite challenging chipping away the ice for 5 hours as a team of 5 people.  It was both physically fatiguing and mentally draining but it was worth it knowing we needed it to be built so we had somewhere to sleep.

From a strictly group-orientated perspective when actually skiing, the snow provided a much larger gap in skill levels between all of the members in the group.  Hiking tends to be based on fitness but skiing is an activity that incorporates fitness, coordination and a great deal of skill in order to move efficiently across the snow.  Due to this gap caused by the winter environment, it was very challenging to keep everyone in the group together and motivated to continue when times got tough.

As an individual, I found the blizzard-condition skiing tasks to be very challenging also. One of the tasks was to face your partner with 20-30m between you, close your eyes and ski in a ‘straight line’ to hit your partner.  Everyone made a curve instead of going straight and I was no exception.  I am usually more dominant with the right side but due to this knowledge, I would over-counteract one time and then change the next so I still do not know which side I am dominant and unfortunately, did not get close to hitting Erwan once!  This was very difficult and although I have done tasks like this when walking where I know roughly the length of my strides, it is much harder on skis that I am still getting used to.  ‘Getting used to’ is a bit of a laugh for me considering this is our last trip with the skis for the semester.

–       What are the most important learning outcomes regarding the equipment you used on this trip ?

In terms of equipment, I believe the snowhole would have been much harder to build without shovels and icesaws.  In addition, it’s obvious that the snow-probe is an essential piece of safety equipment, much like the shovel, in preparation for the possibility of the snow hole caving in or someone being caught in an unlikely avalanche.

We were informed in Evje once before that you cannot put skins on your skis when they have been covered in Klister and this trip highlighted that again for us all.  I think the skins were vital in ascending some of the hills and just getting a general traction on the hard snow.  On the last day, I took the skins off and attempted to ski part of the way home without them.  I got a lot of speed up on the down hills which was fun but they were very slippery and the snow was not friendly in helping you get up a hill without herringboning.

These were obviously the most relevant equipment points for the activities we were doing but I think it’s crucial to include sunglasses and sunscreen.  The snow is extremely bright and it is very difficult to stay so long on such a reflective surface without eye and skin protection.  In addition to these, warm clothes, map, compass, sleeping bag, liner, mat and all of the other usual items were obviously essential to bring as well.

 

–       Nils’ Avalanche Lesson

As seen in the picture below, 2 ski poles can be used to identify the slope of a hill.  The link below this picture is of a YouTube demonstration that identifies and explains the same method.  It is based on the principles of trigonometry and how all triangles are made of 180 degrees.  With the use of two ski poles, soft enough snow to make a mark in and gravity, you are able to take measurements in order to deduce the angle of the slope.

 

–       Nutrition, what did you eat, how did prepare your food, could you improve on your menu?

For breakfast, I decided to cook up a big pot of banana & chocolate porridge then put it into a Tupperware container.  I ate half one morning and ate the other half the next.  I had to keep this with me in my sleeping bag so it didn’t freeze and again, it’s quite heavy but it’s very dense and filling.  I also don’t have to do any cooking with a trangia, which means no cleaning and no cold fingers.  For lunch, I brought a lot of damper with jams or ham and cheese and despite it being very heavy to carry, it’s quite dense filling like the porridge.  Dampers also take up very little space in your bag where the porridge Tupperware container takes a lot more.  However, both of these are very difficult to crush and ruin.  For dinner, my group and I all cooked on a group trangia in our little cooking pit that we dug out.  We did noodles and vegetables one night then rice and vegetables the next.  It was a great dinner with a lot of nutrition and carbohydrates before bed.  I felt extremely satisfied with our meals over the trip and the little marzipan or chocolate snacks across the trip definitely helped that little bit more.  I am not the kind of camper who loves to have to cart a trangia, and gas, and ingredients only to cook it up on camp and waste my time, especially for breakfast.  Sometimes I enjoy the social aspect of cooking at night with friends but in the morning when everyone is on a tight schedule, it’s not fun for me to cook and then have to clean as well.  I think because of this, it was great to test taking my breakfast pre-cooked from home.  My lunches were heavy but extremely filling and the dinners tasted amazing.  Rice and vegetables are always a great filling meal on camp for me but I think we could have brought some different meat along as well.  It wouldn’t go off in cold conditions like it would back home in Australia and I think we could have used this to our advantage a little bit better.  At the end of the trip, I’m still very pleased with my decisions.

 

–       How many calories did you expect to use per day and did your menu cover this requirement?

I did not think about calories for a second and I ran my entire menu on instinct and experience.  We have done large hiking trips and have certainly been on skis before.  I had a rough idea how much food I would need but would not have a clue about the numbers and figures.  I felt like a bowl of porridge, 4 halves of damper, 1/3 of a chocolate bar, ¼ of a marzipan loaf and a bowl of rice with vegetables would be way more than I needed per day and this gave me enough variety to pick and choose whether I felt like I needed my snacks throughout the day or not.  On the bus ride home, I was still polishing off the food I didn’t eat throughout the duration of my trip.

 

–       What kind of shelter did you use, how did it function?

For both nights of our trip, we spent the night in the snow hole we dug on day 1.  The weather was rather good and for some people who are quite uncomfortable in small spaces, they were able to spend a second night outside without requiring shelter from the rain, only walls for the wind.  Our snow holes would protect us from rain to an extent and wind from all directions once we closed over the door.  Beyond the wind and the rain, it’s shape and the general properties of the snow as our building material, made the snow hole much warmer than outside with 5 human bodies all packed in so close together.  I believe outside was around -12 where inside was maybe 0-2 degrees Celsius.

                                  

 

On the second day, we went on our day skiing trip and stopped at one location in one of the most desolate winter wastelands I have ever seen.  We were in a big ice field with a view of the hills all around us, but the flat patch that we were on felt very lonely and it felt as if we were the first people to ever be there.  Nils pointed out a 3-4m high flat wall that he said we had to build an emergency shelter into in under an hour or we would all freeze to death.  Once the scenario was set, we quickly dug straight into the face with the attempt to just build a bench.  Along the way, we tried to keep large blocks in tact.  Once finished the bench, we laid the skis over the face and began stacking all of the big blocks against the skis to try and create a wind blocker that would hopefully trap some warmth aswell.  With 10 people either digging, cutting, stacking, piling or smoothing the shelter together, there was a combined effort of around 5 man and woman hours put into making a comfortable shelter that we could all sit in feeling warm and protected from the wind.  It was actually quite scary for me being on the inside when communicating with those on the outside because even a small layer of snow that was around 40-50cm thick made it very difficult for us to hear each other.  It quickly put an avalanche into perspective and I can’t imagine what it must felt like to be no more than 1m away from people trying to help you and you can’t hear a thing.

 

 

–       Skiing with a heavy pack is challenging, how did you cope?

I feel like I coped quite well.  At the beginning of the trip before we laid our skis down on the snow, our group divided up some of the extra gear from people who had too much to those who didn’t have enough or could take more.  Due to the way I packed, I had plenty of room left and was able to take some food and equipment from some of the others.  The bag was certainly heavy but I do not feel that it was too heavy for my strength and ability level.  I have been physically active my whole life and it was not my very first day on skis, I have had some practice over the last few months.  I have hiked in the Gammon Ranges of South Australia with a 28kg rucksack containing around 8L of water, over annoying rocks and up long sketchy hills.  I found that my experience carrying heavy backpacks on hiking trips definitely helped my ability to endure the challenge of skiing with a pack on too.

References:

utahavalanchecenter 2011, “Tutorial – Measure Slope Steepness.mov”, video, YouTube, 25 August, viewed 31 May 2014, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlCiJma_rpA>.