Blog 4
On this trip we planned to ski to Tjornbrotbu hut to spend 3 nights and 3 days skiing and mountaineering around the area. We carried in our food, minimal camping equipment as we were staying in the hut and our ice climbing gear. Altthough this trip was supposed to be a ski trip, we spent most of our time practising mountaineering skills such as cramponing techniques, using a single walking axe, different self-arrests and different types of anchors. We started as one big group of 22 but majority moved on to other huts and completed a circuit whilst we stayed at Tjornbrotbu.

The first day of skiing to the hut was not overly difficult but the conditions made it a little tough. It was sunny and rather windy, very windy up near the hut, probably around 13-16m/s at its strongest. The snow was not fresh, it had patchy layers of hard ice and made it nearly impossible to go up hill and very sketchy to go downhill. At around the half way mark we passed some other Norwegians who were on their way home from a day trip and majority of them were walking instead of skiing. This re assured us that the conditions were actually difficult and it wasn’t just our lack of skiing ability. Once we reached the hut there was some concern from the group, espicialy Maike whoa arrived in tears saying “there is still people out there, we need to help them.” Approximately 500m from the hut the wind was being channelled through the gully and was blowing around 18 -20m/s in this small area. It definitely tested some people and made the shelter of the hut a little more rewarding. I wasn’t too worried as I had experienced cross country skiing in similar conditions in Australia once but I could see how it was difficult and scary for others who hadn’t.

After dinner Tom Aaron Marijn and I thought it would be a good idea to kill some time by practising walking on our crampons around the hut in the dark. As the snow was hard and icy it was perfect conditions for walking around on crampons. Aaron taught us how to use the techniques of front pointing and flat footing to ascend a hill. After a good half hour of practising, we wanted to test our skills so we ascended the large steep hill behind the hut. The wind was still howling and it was completely dark which added to the difficulty. We successfully climbed approximately 400m in height with some steep sections steeper than 45 degrees. I found front pointing to be easier to learn than flat footing which took me a few more days. After reaching the summit we decided to descend which we hadn’t really practiced yet. Aaron told us to keep our heels down and walk with our feet wider than normal whilst bending our knees to lower our sense of gravity. About halfway down our steep descent we heard an extremely deep and loud thudding noise. In panic, I started to run diagonally down to the snowy hill until I tripped behind Tom and stuck scratched my left crampon into my right upper thigh. Luckily I only received a shallow graze but it definitely made a mess of my pants (as pictured). Luckily the noise was just the snow settling or an avalanche on the other side of the hill. I learnt 2 good lessons from this incident. We should have been more prepared and aware of tbe avalanche danger and it the future I need to not panic and think about my actions. Impulsively running down the hill whilst wearing crampons was silly and I was lucky I didn’t get badly hurt.
On our second day we learnt how to do self-arrests and some kinds of anchors. The self-arrests were more difficult than expected. It was really fun practicing all the different was such as falling feet or head first and lying on your back or stomach. After practicing for around 2 hours I am quite confident with my basic self-arrest but still need to practise the others such as the head first one. I found the snow anchors really interesting and learnt a lot from Aaron. I felt most secure with the anchor where the ice axe was buried and the rope pulled in a T-shape. We dug some snow bollards but we found these ones harder to perfect and when we tested them most, if not all of them failed with more than 2 people pulling on the rope.