Trip to Hovden
–  16-01-15

I join a group who wants to go to Hovden for some ski and snowboard experience. The group exist of 6 people: Mirjam, Jannis, Morrits, Daniel and the roommate of one of the guys. In Hovden is a skiresort we planned to go there sleep in a tent and in Morrits van. We didn’t realy prepared the trip together. At school between the lessons we deceded that Mirjam made the evening dinner for the first night and Morrits and jannis buy the breackfast, snacks and dinner for the second night. We would split up the cost afterwards.

We drop all our stuff in the van on Friday in the afternoon and we leave Kristiansand around 18:00. We were driving with the van and Morrits car. We heard from Wytse who went to Hovden with a Norwegian group of freerunners that the road to Hovden was covered with snow and that we had to drive careful. In Kristiansand was no snow at all so we didn’t worry about it.  After a while driving up north, we saw some snow on the landscapes. How farther we went north how more snow we saw. After 3,5 hours driving we got some troubles with the snow. I had never seen this before, the road was an lane of ice because of the compressed snow. Next to the road were snow piles of two meter high. I was very excited about the whole thing, and I think we all were. The small car got behind and the van was too far ahead to see. We had to drive slow because of the ice road. Norwegian cars passed us with high speed. Most of the cars here have spikes in the wheels, what explains their fast driving. We had to go a bit uphill but the car couldn’t handle it and we had to push the car. We had so much fun by pushing the car, it was cold outside, the sky was  bright and we could see the stars. There were no places to go next to the road because of the snow wall next to the road. At a wider part of the road we decided to stop and put snow chains on the wheels. We didn’t exactly know how to put them on but we managed to put them on there. While we were doing this some Norwegians asked us if we were okay ore needed help, that was ferry kind of them. Luckily the snow stopped falling before we came there. And we continued driving. I had contact with Daniel in the van and told him we were on the road again. The chains helped with getting grip on the road but they made a lot of noise. We found a expansion of the road after a few kilometres and stopped there. A Norwegian car was also on this expansion and the man was fixing something at his wheels against the snow. The man helped us with the snowchain and explained to us that they were too big for the wheels of this car. He made them a bit tighter, this might work. We went on the road again. Still the noise of the chains. We decided to take them of and drive to the nearest side road to camp there. I contacted Daniel in the van and they had seen a church next to the road where we might could overnight. We drove there slowly and parked in front of the old church. The church was part of the village Bykle. Next to the old church was a bigger and new church. We saw lights burning in the big church. Miriam and I went to the new church to ask if we were allowed to sleep at the parking place for the old church. It turned out that a group of tourist also had to overnight somewhere and they stayed at the church. They looked a bit surprised when we asked them but they were okay with it.

We build up our tent and put the cars around it. It was not possible to put the pigs in the ground because of the snow and asphalt. We used the snow to fix the tent. When we finished we took a diner together in the van. The pasta Miriam Cooked was still a bit warm and we eat it like this. Morrits put some candles on the table and the atmosphere was nice and cosy. We went to bed around 2:00.

We woke up in the morning at 8:00. I slept very good. I used the isulation mat from school, my own inflatable mat, down sleeping bag, thin bivacbag and a liner. I was a bit to warm so I opened the sleeping bag at the side a bit. Mirjam also slept very well. We asked the friend of the guys how he slept and he said he slept well (although we didn’t believe them because he was moving a lot when he was laying in his sleeping bag). The temperature in the morning was around -8 °C. The boys in the van where still asleep, and we woke them up. They also had a good sleep but were complaining about too less space.

We broke down the tent and decided what to do. The car was not capable of driving on roads like this without snowchains. Morrits had a gps in the van and knew that there was a gasstation 2km away from the church. Mirjam, Morits and the friend walked to the gasstation to buy snowchains. Daniel Jannis and me. Stayed at the church and prepared the cars for driving. It turned out that the van couldn’t get grip on the road so it needed snowchaines as well. We fixed the snowchains around the wheels of the van and drove to the gasstation. Daniel stayed at the car, in case it would stand in the way. The tourist in the church arrived in a touringcar and they had to pass our car. People were standing on the roof of the gasstation to remove the layer of almost 2 meter of snow, this looked like a lot of fun and they were laughing. Unfortunately the gasstation didn’t sell wheel chains. They called to the next gasstation but they runned out. We decided not to go to Hovden but to go back and look for a nice place to have brunch and look for a place to do some skiing and snowboarding somewhere off piste. We dropped everyone in the back of the van and drove to Daniel. From here we drove back to Velle. We took a lunchbreak at the side of the road and had some fun there. Morrits and Jannis tried out their snowshoes what looked hilarious. We were all in a good mood except the friend (We still thing he didn’t sleep that well, or he might have thought we are weirdo’s, which is totally truth).  We moved on to Velle and went there to ask at the tourist offer if there is a ski resort nearby. And the women told us about Brokke, a bit further south. So we went there. We arrived there around 13:30 and gather information there. The piste was open till 16:00 so we had 2 ours of skiing or snowboarding. Jannis and Morrits went snowboarding, Daniel and the friend went alpine skiing and Miriam and me wanted to try out our cross country skis. Morrits forgot a part of his binding and used mine, which was funny to see (two totally different bindings, my old school second-hand binding and his new fancy binding). We would meet again at 16:00 at the cars.

I had a lot of fun with Miriam on the cross-country skis. It was for both of us the first time. Mirian is a snowboard instructor and struggled less than me on these crazy things. We went on a route what they call løpe. The route was almost flat, but still I couldn’t really go forward. Every time I felt down I had to laugh, and because I was laughing Miriam started to laugh and felt down as well. The sky was a bit grey, but this was my first meeting with the Norwegian snow landscape, and I think it’s amazing. We crossed a little stream and looked at it for a while, the snow on top of the round rocks in the water made the picture amazing. We had to go uphill, but the only thing I did was sliding down, laugh and falling over. I didn’t care about falling, I was wearing a skitrouser, waterproof jacked, had and gloves. Miriam find out a way to go uphill by walking like a penguin. I tried it as well but couldn’t figure it out even with all the instructions Miriam gave me. The only thing I could do was laughing. After this hill part we decided to go back. Downhill was even harder than uphill and the laughing and falling over repeated. On the flat area I managed to go forward without falling, so I already improved myself. We were back at the car 30miutes to early so we went in the café at the skipiste and drink a hot chocolate. The boys came down at 16:00. We dropped everything in the van and drove back to Kristiansand. We had so much pasta left from yesterday that we decided to heat this up at Daniels place in Rolligheden and eat together. Jannis and Morits dropped me off at my dorm kongsgard alle and drove back to K4G.

We didn’t make it to Hovden, but I’m really happy with this experience. It was fun to go on a little adventure with people I barely knew, but still I felt save with them and I had a lot of fun. Now I know my sleeping gear is warm enough for sleeping inside a tent when the temperature drops around 8 degrees. And I had my first experience on the cross country skis. And for the next time we have to bring snow pegs for the tent.