Planning process:
For our second self-organised trip, we decided to go cross-country skiing and alpine skiing as well as snowboarding in the area of Hovden. This trip should help us as a preperation of our great Mountain Safety Trip the week afterwards. Our group consisted of Jannis Theune, Jais Ford, Sharon Ward, Moritz Toelle, Wytse van der Heide and Miriam Bruttel. We decided to sleep one night in the tent/Moritz campervan and the other three nights in a paid hut 3 km away from the alpinesenter of Hovden. Breakfast and dinner, we cooked togehther except Miriam, who wanted to join our trip one day later, and for lunch was everybody selfresponsibly.
Execution of the field trip:
Day 1 (Thursday, 19th of March):
While Moritz and Jannis dorve up to Hovden with Moritz’s campervan, I took the bus from Kristiansand to Hovden together with Jais, Sharon and Wytse. We arrived in the afternoon and after we found a good sleeping spot next to a parink area, we started our first short day trip on cross-country skiing tracks. After some time, when we realized, that we are going in different speed, we split up our group into a female and a male group. Moreover the snoe conditions were terrible, because the snow was hard as ice and it was quite difficult to get grip with our skiies. Although the snow conditions were bad, we had a lot of fun in the sunshine and we gathered together again on top of a hill. The great downhill part was about 2 km long and everybody enjoyed the quicker run. Back at our camp, we went grocerie shopping, set up the tent, lighted a fire next to the campervan, enjoyed the dinnertime and talked a long time about the experiences of the day.
Day 2 (Friday, 20th of March):
On the next morning, we decided again to split up the group. While the others wanted to go skiing in slopes again, the Germans Moritz, Jannis and me decided to go on a more adventurous trip skiing up on a mountain range. The first part uphill took us only 45 minutes although we went up nearly 200 metres. On top of the mountain range, we had a beautiful view over the city Hovden and we could see all the different ski loipes. Additionally we saw some ptarmigans walking around. After a small lunch break, we decided to ski up on an other peak, but this part was really steep and at some points pretty dangerous. Fortunately, we put on same sticky wax on our skiies in the morning so that we had good support. Our way back to the camp took us almost the same amount of time, beacuse we had to go downhill between some trees. But actually, this was great fun for all of us, even if we were falling while trying some telemark turns. For the last part of our daytrip, we had to ski next or in between some cabins. Sometimes we were also skiing along the streets, but we managed the way back without taking off our skies.
Day 3 & 4 (Saturday & Sunday, 21st & 22nd of March):
For the last two days, we decided to go alpine skiing/snowboarding at the ski resort of Hovden. This was also the first time, Sharon and Jais tried to go snowboarding and both improved a lot on both days. Luckily, we had two wonderful days with very good snow conditions and sunshine. Only on Sunday afternoon, some ski routes were closed due to strong wind on top of the mountain.
Challenges:
For me, it was a great challenge to accept the bad snow conditions on both days. While I was really annoyed skiing uphill on hard snow the first day, on the second daytrip I was surprised, that you can even ski uphill and downhill with the same wax on frozen snow. An other challenge for us Germans was to go skiing only on tracks on the first day, which was kind of boring and not challenging enough. Therefore we agreed to split up the group on the second day, what turned out as a good decision.
Group dynamic processes before and after:
I did this self-organised trip with friends, I know better than other students in my course. That’s why it was easier to be in a relaxed mood, although we had different levels of cross-country skiing. We managed the two days by splitting up the group in parts of the first daytrip and on the whole second day, but everbody seemed to be happy with that compromise. Personally, I would say, that our group dynamic process was excellent, because nobody of us had any expectations of the skitrip and it ended up as one of my best skitrips during this semester.
Reflection on the learning outcomes:
Actually, we decided for the first time to go skiing without a map and not following the original plan due to the fact, that we found a sleeping spot on the other side of the city. Happily, this was a very good decision, because I had one of my best ski trips so far with a lot of fun and a great group cohesion. Although we are skiing on differnet levels, we managed it to experience two amazing daytrips without feeling that anybody is under stress. In addition, all of us tried to improve our ski techniques, especially the telemark turns on the second day.
Original plan of our skitrip (day routes):