SELF ORGANISED TRIP
| Nesvatn, Vestfold og Telemark | | Grimstad |
23.02.21 – 27.02.21
What a challenge to organise a trip! The first thought I got about that was nothing compared to what actually entailed organising a proper and complete trip, basically because I had never did that before. To contextualise you in the following reflection of this trip, we named it “Ambitious trip”/“Task failed successfully”, you will understand why.
Given that the week before living I was on a trip with some friends in Trømso, I could not “assist” to the planning sessions where my group was deciding where to go and what to do. So definitely I was up to whatever they planned. However, I was in contact with them; they changed the plan as well as the way of planning because of some organisation issues, too many people focused in one task, waste of time, some disagreements, etc. Finally, the group opted to divide the tasks and work in small groups: ones in charge of the route card of A plan, others of B plan, others of weather and environmental issues.
- A plan: Circular route around Nesvatn lake in 5 days. A total of 6 days out. The first night somewhere closer to but not in our tents. Starting of the expedition: from the 2nd day to the 6th (5 days and 4 nights camping). Moving with all our stuff in our backs, with skis.
- B plan: Daily trips with a base camp. Same timing and duration of the trip. Less weight in our backs, tents in the same spot.
The variation of plans mainly depended on three things: the snow conditions, the weather and the physical condition of each one of us.
As everything, dividing the planning in sub-groups has strengths and weaknesses. On the one hand, the main advantage is the efficiency, especially when you have few time left, because there are less people working in one thing, more attention and concentration, people more focused. Otherwise, on the other hand the group can experience some misunderstandings regarding the whole plan. I noticed that each sub-group was planning stuff independently and going further without having the approval of the rest while doing it, during the process. Thus, it led to some doubts that were not still solved in the morning of the day we were leaving. The fact is that we should probably have done more meetings before getting to the final plan or should have done and received feedbacks from each one of us.
Furthermore, during this same morning while putting things in common, we realised that the weather was not as good as we expected as well as the risk of avalanches; both things were not good at all for our plan (that was already planned). We did not check properly those variables (big mistake!!!) while planning and when we did it was a bit late because we already had things ready to leave and all the route finished. At least, this first day was thought for going around the area and staying one night in an Airbnb apartment and then start the day after the expedition, so we were not in a hurry at all. This is one of the reasons why we checked accurately the variables through the websites https://varsom.no/ and https://www.yr.no/ and we realised that there was a high risk of avalanche in some parts of the route, as well as the level and condition of snow. So we decided to go and see the beginning of the route and then decide about what to do. From this moment on, it all consisted in being flexible, opened to change plans, to improvise and to make good decision-making since we did not know for sure what were we going to face. Ah, and all of this surrounded by good mood and good vibes, or at least try to.
As we were planning to do a bonfire the first afternoon we were looking for some store to buy wood. In that moment one of the two cars broke down unexpectedly. We were 30’ far from our starting point of the route, so we decided to just stay in there while waiting for a mechanic and camp this night also there, in a field next to the road. Next morning we arrived to the starting point of our expedition, with everything ready.
The trip itself kept changing and made us adapt to the circumstances we were facing in every moment. What led us to change suddenly the location of our trip was the conditions of the snow; as I have said before, we did not expect that much snow and we were not ready for that. So we drove south-east close to Grimstad, we stayed in a cute hut for two more nights and we did daily hikes there around the coastline. Those two days there were totally the contrary; chilling, resting, enjoying the company and people, chain of massages and cosy warm meals. Actually, “doing nothing” was also really nice, even more after spending two days improvising in deep snow.
