For my second self-organized skiing Field Trip I was grouped with Sean, Justin and Ditte. Since the weather over the past weeks still neither promised fresh snow nor guaranteed stable negative degrees and thus easy waxing conditions anywhere south of Hovden we quickly decided to definitely drive up at least as far north again. Quickly we agreed on trying out the route from Haukeliseter to Holmavatnhytta and back that I had already planned for my first field trip. Due to a missunderstanding of our lecturers we were free to combine the field trip with the Holmenkollen Ski Festival (08.-10.03.19) and decided to do so to save petrol money.
Coming together for a dinner and readjusting the plan to the new group was a very fun and useful start. Our Plans (A, B and C) pretty much stayed the same as they were originally thought through and put down in my former blogpost. Though we did discuss the route again and filled in route cards as well as weather conditions which were forecasted to be -2 – -8 degrees Celsius, cloudy with mild wind and up to 10cm of snow throughout Monday-Thursday.
In terms of packing I didn’t change a lot but put my compass into my hipbelt-pocket to have it handy anytime. For waxing scraping of any wax that was still on and putting on two thin layers of blue worked throughout the whole trip. Like with clothing in the outdoors I reckon two thin layers in any way beat one thick layer of wax.

After a 4-hour drive on Monday we, after a couple of individual warm up exercises set off due south. On the first few km we stopped three times to fix Justins and Dittes waxing problems as they were having either to much then too little grip. Even though that cost us about half an hour of time I think it was the right decision in these relatively easy conditions to take the necessary stops to make the future journey enjoyable for everyone of the party. Another discovery we made was, that the conditions allowed to see big rocks and rockfaces though off of the plain snowlayer it was almost impossible to certainly tell the rise or fall of the slope. On the uphills I tackled this issue with tacking and just taking it step by step, on the downhills I tried to make out any sort of rocks or faces to find our more about the descend. These challenging conditions accompanied us throughout our whole trip. Fortunately we did get a lot of fresh snow which meant very forgiving downhills even if it got a little steeper once or twice. Throughout the whole expedition we followed the sticked route to Holmavatnhytta. We decided against pure winter navigation due to the challenging visibility though tried to keep track of where we were to learn throughout the trip either way. Marking the sticked winter route from ut.no into our maps from norgeskart would have definitely helped a lot keeping track of where we were. This way we got a little confused at times and were bound to the sticks which wasn’t the best of feelings.
We finished our first day setting camp on a lake and after cooking up dinner and melting snow were off to a comfortable nights sleep. Because of following the sticks even though we were able to see high cliffs (big contours) around us we weren’t able to surely locate us on the map which emphasized again how hard winter navigation is even with map and compass in hand.

Tuesday starting with snow and mild wind from the east. After having breakfast and packing up in 1hr40min we set off and soon were able to locate us in the middle of Engelstjonn, one of the big lakes on our route. Making good pace alternating the leader we skiied past Ingelsvatn, descended down to Langevatn and had lunch after passing it. In these relatively mild conditions I was able to make lunch in the lunchbreak itself though next time I will prepare it beforehand as higher winds/colder temperatures/more snow would have led to me having to unnecessarily work much more in these conditions. After another big swing following the sticked route we were able to see the hut south of us and reached it almost an hour later. Like in hiking this showed me how long it can still take to get somewhere even though it looks to be very close. Landing in the hut we had a realxing time making a fire and getting comfortable as we were planning on a big third day. Even though Justin who took too much unnecessary crap with him couldn’t take over any group gear for the whole expedition we were all feeling fit and ready to make 15-20km in the next day to almost return all the way to Haukeliseter. We decided on that because 1. Ditte needed to catch a bus on Thursday afternoon 2. we hadn’t seen a weather forecast in two days and can never know how which way the weather might swing. Thus we used the hut to fill up our tanks, get warm and dry the inner tent planning to leave at 9 o clock the next day to make our return north.

We started in 20+cm of fresh snow that had almost completely wiped away our tracks from the day before. Alternating the trailbraking position we were doing great but not too tiring pace with more than 3km/hr. Having a 2-hour-window without snow and lots of vision before hitting Langevatn was rising my mood even more and after the hardest part of the day, a near-white-out ascend to Ingelsvatn was done we were sure we would make it very far this day since it had just past noon. The snow and clouds rejoining us before coming up onto a little saddle south of Ingelsvatn made me realise once more how important it is to be able to walk a bearing (in our case follow sticks) and keep calm and confident when tacking up steep still knowing your direction. Checking with the group that everybody still felt fit every now and then we eventually made it 1km short of Haukeliseter at 5pm and decided to set camp. We were a little tired but very happy with a 20km day. Besides that we were very sure to drop Ditte off in time I was also happy about being so close back to the road since we hadn’t seen a weather forecast in 3 days now and didn’t know if wind or snow would pick up anytime soon. Getting woken in our tent by oxygen shortage around 11pm that night showed how quickly the weather can worsen. It had snowed so much wet grippy snow that without any wind it would just keep collecting on our tent pushing it down a couple of inches every hour and even limiting the oxygen supply inside. At 3am Justin woke the rest and we decided to push off the snow together from the inside. That gave back a lot of the natural breathability of the tent right away though resulted in me and Sean (outsidesleepers of tent) getting even less room than we had before to sleep as the snow was pushing from outside. I decided and managed to sleep through it because I knew we had an easy day coming. For the future and if the next day would have been a strenous one I will probably consider getting outside to free the tent of the snow including the sides to allow for a comfortable sleep.
Getting up in the morning and backing out of the tent we realized it had actually snowed more thant 50cm which was incredible. Not having planned for breakfast anyway we, after shoveling free the tent packed up in 1hr and made our way to Haukeliseter at very slow pace through very deep snow to have a lovely breakfast in the local hut around 8am.

Looking back on my first skiing field trip in a proper winter environment I learned that I can comfort myself on an advanced tour adjusting pace and distance never feeling very unsafe. I have still got a lot to learn about winter navigation and have realised how very hard it is in snowy conditions even with good visibility. Concluding I think this field trip had prepared me well for the mountain safety field trip coming up next week and I am looking forward for staying in snow hole and emergency shelter in the snow.

Key Notes:
Draw Winter Route on Map, Take and follow smaller route card legs when in worse weather/with group/unsure, prepare for the worst, hope for the best, be aware of your surroundings, prepare lunch before lunch break, have snacks handy anytime