This trip took place at Troll Active, which is situated near to Evje. It took around an hour to get there in the car, which Martin drove, with a couple more of us also sharing a lift. When we got there on the Monday we found out that unfortunately the past few days, the weather had been poor and it had rained too much, meaning that we had to cancel the first days skiing and instead we just had an extra lecture. We met inside one of the huts at around 6pm and the instructor we were given was called Tim. He taught us all about the types of clothing that we should be wearing with us this week and also any extra clothing that we needed to bring in our day packs in casing something happened and we had to change. The second half of the lecture then consisted of Tim showing us how to properly wax cross country skis, using the proper wax. After the lecture, we then headed back to the mini houses that we were staying in and most of the people in my house were playing card games, however I decided that I would use this spare time to teach myself some more Norwegian that I had already started with. The second day we  went to a ski centre that was around an hour in the mini van because the local tracks were un-skiable due to the weather. When we arrived at Bortelid we split into two groups then got started with the basics of cross-country skiing techniques. Once we had learnt the basics we were taking around the local area on the tracks just so we could get used to the skis and get back into the rhythm of skiing again. Then we made it back to the ski cabin for lunch where there is a canteen and after lunch we went back out again for the rest of the afternoon, once again, just skiing round the tracks and experiencing a full days skiing.  Afterwards we skied back to the van and travelled back to Troll Active. Everyone was very tired at this point as we didn’t have a lecture as we had two the previous night so we were just able to relax, make dinner and then go to bed.

Wednesday we woke to sunny weather, we quickly had breakfast (whilst some people rushed a shower) and then headed back to Bortelid. This time we were going to spend the day going off-piste so we could practise for our mountain safety trip that was coming up at the end of Easter near Hovden. At first I felt very unstable going through the deep snow as it was something that I had never done before. However I soon got into the hang of things and I was confident in myself when skiing in the deep snow. Although when it got to the bit where we had to go steep up a hill that took a while to learn the correct techniques and everyone except a couple of people struggled on this part of the journey. It was fun though when we had to ski back down the hill but of course again, most of us fell over doing this but it was funny to watch! We then came back to the cabins for lunch and then when we headed back out and took a long tour round the area which again was a bit slow but upon turning around we were given the option to join a fast group and get back and quick as we could which was enjoyable. On this night we had cold injury lectures along with what we would do if we were involved in a snow avalanche. Thursday was the big day for us. We got there and we were told we would be taking a 16km route round the whole track, which leaded up to the peak of the mountains that surrounded the area. This took us all day and it was hard on everyone but everyone seemed to enjoy it. We stopped several times on the way up and it was physically challenging as obviously most of the way we were travelling up so we had to work hard. Upon the way down we tried to ski down, but for some of us, using cross country skis was too hard when the mountain was this steep and as we were already a bit late for the van going back to Troll Active we had to walk on the bits that were too steep and we kept falling over on.

The final night at Troll Active, we spent doing fun group activites that each country had prepared. As I was representing England with the rest of ‘The Brits’ as we were called. We decided to go for a classic game, which was called musical chairs. We set up chairs in a circle round the fire in the middle and had some speakers and every time we stopped the music everyone would run to the nearest chair but there was one less chair than people and those who didn’t manage to find a seat lost. Each round we removed one chair and one person until we found a winner. I would say that I enjoyed the German game the best, which involved crawling around on the floor blindfolded and another person has to use a spoon to create noise for the person to follow, although this ended up in me banging my head several times!

The final day, we woke up and headed this time, to the local ski centre. We had to do this since we were leaving Troll Active at 3pm so there wasn’t really time to go to Bortelid. When we got there the snow was icy but it was skiable. However this just meant that we would have to keep applying fresh wax throughout the day. All in all it was all a very enjoyable experience and I certainly learnt a lot about skiing and how I could push myself in the field.