In late February 2018 eleven members of our UIA international Outdoor education class took part in a three-day Ski touring expedition. The expedition began in Haukeli ski centre four hours north of Kristiansand and ended in Hovden ski resort. The expedition consisted of 45km up and down steep hills as well as long stretches across frozen lakes between the mountains. Due to the high elevation and cold winter conditions the flora and fauna in the area was sparse. However, we did see the occasional tree as well as a heard of wild Reindeer in the distance.
During this field trip I had several different focus areas around developing skills in winter conditions. This included efficiently packing and carrying a multi-day pack on skis, navigation in winter mountain conditions, applying basic skiing techniques learnt in Evje to a ski touring expedition. As well as becoming more proficient in general camp craft such as making shelters and cooking in winter conditions. During this trip I was able to achieve the majority of these of these learning outcomes. I was able to pack my ruck sack effectively to enable me to carry it for multiple days with all the essential items I needed. I was also able to develop and refine several of ski techniques such as step turns, tacking, herringboning and maintaining appropriate ski posture. These proved to be particularly important when skiing with the pulk attached me. Some areas to improve upon for next expedition for me are to take more initiative in practising my navigation in winter conditions. This proved to be difficult to do with such a large sized group particularly as we where all spread out along the trail for most of the three days and certain participants took on more of a leadership role and took charge of navigation for the majority of the trip. I was able to learn some invaluable lessons when it came to more general camp craft skills and techniques. I learnt the importance of using high performance gas and choosing efficient high energy meals. I have learnt that for future expeditions I would not eat hot breakfasts and use instant meals or pre-cooked meals for dinners which just require hot water to be added.
This expedition has proved to be extremely useful for refining equipment required for multi day expeditions and how this may be best divided amongst group members. For the most part I was happy with the majority of my equipment however there are some changes I would make for next time. I would take less clothes as I now know what layers I need to be comfortable in winter conditions and could leave some out of behind. Aside from this the only major alteration I would make to my equipment would be to use winter gas for cooking and ensure it was insulated to speed up the cooking process and limit the amount of time I was exposed to cold weather.
Over the three days Brad and I tried to keep our meals as lightweight and efficient as possible. They consisted of three dinners of noodles, cous cous and instant mash potatoes, wraps for lunch oats for breakfast and nuts and chocolate for snacks. These foods where easy to prepare and seemed to provide sufficient sustenance over this short period of three days. However, this may have varied if the trip had had been extended we may have begun to lack energy as we were consuming heavily refined foods lacking in several essential vitamins and minerals which may cause negative outcomes over an extended period.
For this trip I shared my two-man tent with Brad. We chose to leave the inner tent behind and take just the fly and ground sheet to save weight and space. This had both positives and negatives as it allowed us both more room to fit all essential items inside our packs and saved weight making skiing easier. However, on our third night we stayed in a small valley and the wind came through during the night and within a lot of snow which ended up inside our tent as a result of having no inner. We where fortunate that this occurred on our last night as it caused a lot of our equipment to become wet. To avoid this occurring again in future expeditions I will ensure that I build a snow wall the height of the tent around all sides of the tent, as a form of wind protection as well as to ensure any loose snow is from wind is deposited on the wall rather than the tent.
When packing for this trip I found it useful to draw upon knowledge from the experiences of Len, Thomas and Tim provided to us in the Ejve basic ski course week around packing. This allowed to me to narrow down what where the most essential items and what was redundant which I found especially useful as I had never had to pack for a trip requiring so much equipment specific to winter conditions. I found this enable me to pack quite a light rucksack making the trip easy to manage which was important as I was still refining basic skiing skills which we had learnt in Evje. One alteration I would have made in relation to the groups equipment would be some of the items that we carried in our pulk. Whilst it was good to have the experience of skiing with a pulk it did lead to us as a group bringing several heavy non-essential items such as a bag of wood and extra water. This made it slow moving through several sections of the expedition as the group had to weight for the person with the pulk.
Overall this proved to be an excellent opportunity being exposed to winter conditions providing several valuable lessons and well as highlighting several areas for improvement.