So for our self organized trip a few of us decided to go up to Bortelid again and stay for 3 nights. We weren’t quite sure how we were going to get there, but after some research we found that we could take a couple of buses there. When we got to the second bus exchange it turns out that we were super lucky because the bus needed to be ordered and we didn’t even know that was a thing. We go lucky because another group had ordered it who were going up to the same place and the small bus only had 6 seats left…for the 6 of us! So it was perfect! The place we were rented ended up being a super nice cabin with a big living room and kitchen, a flat screen tv and an awesome bathroom….but sadly no wifi.
The next day we went to go skiing and decided that we were going to spend all the days skiing with our full backpacks so we’d be ready for our future snow hole trip. It actually wasn’t bad at all, carrying the bags for the duration. That may have also been because none of my food was in my backpack or my sleeping bag hahaha. We decided that we wanted to go off piste for the day and my other group members knew a route from the previous Bortelid trip and so we went on it. We must have made a wrong turn because it got really difficult, really quickly. We tried to navigate through the thick snow down the other side of a mountain top and the trees were really thick and it got pretty steep.
It eventually go to the point where it was too dangerous to continue and we had to go all the way back up. The group wanted to stay on their skis and go back up that way, but I knew it would take forever because we went a long distance down and it was really steep. So I took my skis off and just walked back up. Sure, my feet went down to my lower thigh/knees, but I pressed my feet down hard with each step so it would be stable. I quickly surpassed everyone while carrying my skis and they eventually wizened up and took theirs off as well.
It took about 2 hours to backtrack back up to our starting point, halfway up it wasn’t as steep and we put our skis back on. Jill and I got to the top first and had to wait 15 minutes for the guys to catch up, they were really having difficulty. From that point on I decided to never just venture off randomly again, to always have a route and sure path, if possible.
The next day we were going to go on the route we took on the Thursday of our other Bortelid trip, but when skied part of the way the wind got really bad and it was an all out snow storm around us. It was so strong that on the steep downhill parts the wind would have me just inching down the slop and on the uphill portions it would just push you straight up the hill. We had to stop and break out our snow goggles for the first time and mine fit perfectly over my prescription sunglasses so I was very happy. Sadly after travelling a few more meters and seeing other skiers wipe out when coming past us, we held a group vote and opted to turn around and ski on a different track.
From there we broke up because the guys were dicking around and Jill and I wanted to get a move on and ski another section. So we had a lovely day practicing going off piste ourselves. Too bad we only got 2 days of skiing as our bus left early the next morning :(