The Week before our mountain safety trip we decided to go to Hovden to combine a cross-country tour with snowboarding. Our group consisted out of 7 Students (Daniel, Wytse, Moritz, Jais, Sharon, Miriam and me). The aim of the trip was to get used to the area and to improve our cross-country skiing.
Program
Day one
Leaving Kristiansand early arriving at Hovden at 13.00
Set up the tent
Cross country tour on tracks
Day two:
Cross country tour into the back country
Day 3
Snowboarding in Hovden
Night Snowboarding
Day 4 Snowboarding
Execution
We left Kristiansand early on Thursday, so we arrived just after noon in Hovden. On the first day we made an easy trip on the ski tracks with about 13 km distance. After a while some group members didn’t fell too comfortable with the equipment. Beside that the snow conditions were not very good so the motivation was not too high. That’s why we shortened our trip after 10 km. After the first difficulties we all got used to the conditions and the equipment and enjoyed the last part of the tour. The night was not too cold so we could sleep quite good.
2nd Day
We had to split up the group. Daniel, Moritz and I wanted to discover the back country and leave the tracks. We started skiing towards some mountains and made our way up there.
We reached the top after quite fast and decided to extend our tour a bit. So we went to some other peaks nearby. It was really nice to go from peak to peak in an untaught area. The snow conditions were not the best but the area was really good to ski. We improved our telemark turns and enjoyed especially the downhill parts. As we reached the valley we realized that we were quite far away from our camp so we had to make our way though backyards.
3rd and 4th day we went to the Hovden ski centre to enjoy the sunny weather and to improve our snowboard technique. We tried some night snowboarding but after a day snowboarding we were quite exhausted and the snow conditions in the night were not too good.
Learning outcome
It was nice to improve our telemark turns even though we fall a lot. Beside that it was interesting to see how fast we could have got lost if we would not orientate us at specific features or a map.