Week 9, the plan was to organise our own Friluftsliv skiing trips in small groups, Flurin and i chose to organise this trip today and 2 others would join us for the trip (Lea & Jana: 16 month old). The aim of the trips were to improve our ski technique, increase the distance travelled and increase the weight we were carrying.  

We planned to begin our trip in Langeid, this was because of the good snow and weather conditions in this region and it was not far to travel from Kristiansand. We made several different plans for the route and we would decide on which one to take when we arrived and saw the conditions, however we knew that our first location to travel to would be Tjønndalen (7km away from Langeid) and that we would stay for a maximum of 3 nights. 

Travelling to Langeid: The plan was for the four of us to drive there together, however the space was limited due to large pulk (sledge) which would be taken for child – therefore we decided i would take the bus and meet the others at the location. We met at Langeid at 10.30 on Wednesday 25th. We decided that we would share all the food apart from lunches. My bag weighed 14kg.

Dynamics of the group: Although the group dynamics were good during the planning stage of the trip, the communication between Flurin and i was not so good. This is because we chose to communicate over email rather than meeting to arrange the trip, this became difficult when we were deciding on locations and distances to travel etc. We agreed on all of the plans and i was happy with the chosen distance as my main personal aim was to increase the height which i was skiing at.

Day 1:

We arrived in Langeid at around 10.45, after preparing the map and ski’s, we began skiing at around 11.15. The beginning of the journey was the steepest part so we knew that it would be a challenge. The height was approximately 700m, but there were zigzag tracks the whole way so it wasn’t difficult to follow.  After the first 15 minutes we were finding it really difficult to ski up hill, the snow was very wet and icy which made it hard to grip, therefore i took of the ski’s as to save energy and it was easier to walk for the next 0.5km. As we got higher up the mountain the snow became drier and so it was possible to begin skiing again. The first leg of the journey took us a lot longer than expected and when we reached the top of the steepest part we took a short lunch break, approx 2.30pm.

Finally found our little hut

When we continued the journey, we had approximately 4km left, however this took us not so long as most of the land was flat with a few up hill areas. Although there were supposed to be tracks leading to our destination, the snowfall meant that we could follow them and our map reading skills were really good in finding the way. We arrived in Tjønndalen at around 6pm and it was just beginning to go dark. We stayed in a hut tonight, cooked dinner and slept really early.

Day 2:

Today the weather was not so good: snow storm and a lot of fog making it difficult for us to continue with our plans. We decided that we would not travel the 14km to Gaukhei, but that we would take a shorter tour in-between the two destinations. I left the hut for 2 hours in the morning and took a tour up one of the mountains but there was not much to see due to the weather so we returned to the hut for lunch. Later on in the day the fog had lifted so we went on a longer tour and saw some amazing views! Unfortunately one of Lea’s boots broke this evening. We decided to stay in the same hut one more night and we arrived back at around 6.30pm.

  

Sunbathing in the snow!

Day 3:

The weather was better this morning and the sun was out, we were very tired today. We decided that we would play on the ski’s around the Tjønndalen this morning and i wanted to find some good places to ski downhill but by this time the snow was very deep.

After a few hours we decided we would head back to Langeid, we gave our selves plenty of time at the bus would eave to Kristiansand at 5pm. We left at around 11am, after a few hours we realised we were travelling a lot quicker that before and we didn’t want to arrive at the bus stop too early so we took a few detours and i found some more places to go downhill approximately 2pm. When we arrived at the steep area of Langeid we decided that it was too steep to ski down so we would walk. This took around 1 hour, but we still arrived in Langeid too early for the bus it was around 3.30pm. Travelled around 9-10km. Flurin and the others decided that they would take my ski’s home in the car and i would take a walk Granheim approx 3km as i didn’t want to wait for 1.5 hours. I arrived back at the bus stop in time for the bus and arrived back in Kristiansand at 7.30pm.

Reflection:

I really enjoyed this trip and the group was a good choice as we agreed things most of the time even when the plans had to change. I think we were able to maintain the dynamics of the group by saying what we wanted to do, for example on day two when the others didn’t want to go for a short tour i decided to go alone but to stay close to the destination rather than doing the same things all the time. The aims of the trip which i achieved were: increasing the weight which i carried for the three days, this will be beneficial for the mountain trip coming up, i believe my skiing technique has improved and this was shown when we were able to travel the set distance in a shorted amount of time, and finally, although i didn’t increase my distance travelled so much, i was able to travel a greater distance up hill and i increased the height which i travelled (a personal aim of mine). The challenges we faced were: The wet/slippery snow conditions up hill on the first day -we overcame this by knowing when it was necessary to walk up hill and then added a stronger wax to the ski’s before continuing, the bad snowstorm on the second day – we were able to quickly change our plans on this day and we knew what was safe, lastly: the fact that we completed one of the trips in a shorter amount of time than expected – here we changed the route slightly so that we would not arrive at the end in too much time.

Next time when i plan a trip as part of a group i will ensure that the group meets up and organises the trip together, we will make one secure plan and then 2 or 3 back up plans incase something goes wrong. This will be better than making so many different plans as we will know exactly how long we will be away and where we should be at each time point.