Ah… this familiar place almost felt like home. I was nice to return to Berdalsbu after exactly one month. The mountains greeted us with nice weather the day we arrived and the next day. We saw a pack of rain deer minding their own business up in the mountains – what a beauty.
For the first night after searching for a potential area for digging a snow hole we squeezed ourselves into two cabins that were originally designed to accommodate around 16-18 people – we were 24. Next day we came back to the places that we thought were suitable for digging a hole. Snow conditions were terrible for skiing with a huge rucksack, it was hard and I couldn’t turn. It was agonizing to get down from the hill where the cabins were. But when we started digging all the mental and physical pain of falling again and again disappeared.
It took us a whole day to dig a snow hole. Luckily it was a beautiful sunny and warm day. It was pretty enjoyable to dig, to carve a home out of a massive pile of snow, although Flurin dug the most of it. My snow hole mates were Jochen, Flurin and Jais.
Next morning we woke up to find a completely different weather outside. It was windy (very). Deep in my heart I felt happy – I really wanted something where we could touch reality of mountains more closely (it’s nice to have a trip in a good weather, but a trip in a bad one is something to remember and to learn from).
We practiced mountain navigation as we ascended the mountains east of the valley where Berdalsbu was. As we gained altitude wind became stronger and stronger – goggles for and expedition in such weather was must. My regular sun glasses provided me with little protection against sharp snow flakes that were blown into my eyes.
We dug a shelter for lunch up in the mountains. It didn’t provide us sufficient wind and snow protection so after five minutes or so we were almost covered with snow. After a break we got down from the mountain to the cabin applying bad weather conditions navigation skills. We dried and warmed ourselves in the cabin. Discussed about the mistakes we’ve made in the mountains. After that we’ve returned to our snow holes for a second night in them.
Next morning the weather was more or less the same. We headed towards the road abandoning our beloved snow homes. On the way Len gave us a task to go in a straight line blindfolded – to demonstrate how you can loose the sense of direction in a whiteout conditions. Yup, I almost turned around, while thinking I was going straight.
Not far from the road we had a task to dig in in 20 minutes. The task was to imitate survival in very bad weather conditions. All of us passed this test. Only Will’s life would have been in question, because he spent to much time on finding a perfect spot 🙂
I was disappointed a bit when we headed home instead of staying another night in these snow holes. It was wise to go home because half of the group were cold and wet. And I got constipated… Not enough fluids and to much rice I guess – most important learning outcome.
