The trip that everybody was looking forward to but also maybe feeling a bit anxious about, sleeping in a snowhole sounds quite cold but also really cool!

We where already in Hovden that weekend, so we where dropped off by the guy where we rented a cabin. We made the final adjustments to our packs, waxed our skies and split up in two groups, for the rest of the week I was going with Tim, the guy from Trollactive we met earlier on the basic skicourse. The first day we had to get used to the skies again, but that went quite fast after a while I was back in the flow. The first day was a gentle uphil to a cabin, and it was about 6km so not to challenging. The best thing of the day was seeing a giant herd of raindeer running across a mountain. Also when we reached the hut, the view was beautiful and the weather as well. We chilled in the hut for a bit and then went out again to search for a place to dig snowholes. We didn’t find anything so Oz and me decided to “take a look” on top of a small mountain of course there was nothing but the feeling was amazing, because the view was really good, and the wind was so strong we got almost blown off. On the way down we had a really nice gentle downhill back to the cabin. This was a nice practise and it went fairly well I would say. Luckily others found good spots for snowholes. We ate some dinner in the hut and went to bed to prepare for a day of digging.

The second day was just skiing downhill a bit, but with the big bag packs and some people struggling alot it took is at least an hour to get down. Then we started digging. We could choose between a traditional and a sigg iglo. Since the rest of us was building all traditional snowholes we decided we wanted to build de sigg iglo. Oz and me started digging a hole straight down, while Sven, Anne and Sharon started preparing the tunnel for the entrance. After a long time digging, it was time for the exciting part. Oz, Steven, Adele, Petr and me went inside like a rugby scrum. Shoulder to shoulder. Then they threw a tarp over us and started throwing snow on us for about 15 minutes. It was quite strange to be burried alive, it felt like the roof would never be stable and if I would move my hand a bit it would collapse. But after we went out the tunnel one by one, we saw that there was at least a two meter snowpile on top. It looked like a giant ants nest. After some more hours of digging it was ready, I started a fire with a firesteel and no paper whatsoever, so I was quite proud of that. We sat by the fire, had some dinner and went to bed.

The third day we would go for a daytrip, but the weather turned out really bad, it was quite stormy and skiing wasn’t that much fun with that wind. But it was a cool experience. We had a break on top in a bivy bag with our group wich was really cool to experience as well. Not that comfy though… So we decided to go off the mountain to find a spot where we could talk about avalanches and practice some telemark stuff. After showing us a snowprofile and creating some small avalanches he told us to skie down an small avalanche prone area so we could feel the snow coming down with us. It was quite scary but so much fun. To bad i didn’t manage to not fall but a well. Afterwards we did some nice telemark stuff on a small hill wich was great fun and good practice. Then we went into the hut to shelter a bit. And then we where off to the snowholes and didn’t have anything to do other then staying warm in the sleeping bag, because it was quite stormy. We just talked a bit and went to bed really early.

The next morning we where woken up by Sven diving in and rescueing us. The entrance was completly blocked so he was worried and when he screamed, he didn’t hear us screaming back because of the snow. When I went outside to use “the toilet” the storm struck me and it was an awfull feeling being outside with the snow blowing hard in your face. I went back inside to pack my stuff and then we left to go back to road, since the weather was to bad to stay and it would get even worse. It was such a cool way down, through the deep snow that was blown all over the place and with the storm blowing around us. Close to the road we made some emergancy bivaks where I knew we weren’t going to sleep in but it was still fun to do it. Then we went back to the road and off home. I walked to the road with Pet rand Oz because we didn’t want to pay 100 kr extra to be dropped off at Evje.

The trip was really good, I really enjoyed the skiing because I felt much more comfortable on them then before. Also the snowhole was a really good experience to dig it and also sleep in it. We didn’t skie as much as I expected because of the snow but it was still a really good week.