Local Powder sugar

FINALLY It's been snowing quite steadily over the past week and a half  result: powder-sugar covered neighborhood and....Oslo marka. Recon mission last tuesday: 

Thickness: good (new skies on, only a very little twig here and there)

Consistency: loose (like beach sand)

Glide: mwah outside the tracks

Stickyness: mwah inside the tracks;)

Fun: huuuuuge! :-)

Happy 2014!

Best wishes for 2014 to everyone! 

Kickstart of the new year with a weekend trip up to Venabu. We took a lucky guess to wait one more week before we drove up, which proved to be a good choice as the past week had steadily brought in new snow. Little or no wind made sure it was all still there, loose and powdery. Guarantee for knee-deep plodding, burning legs and breathtaking views.

saturday: the sun is giving it a try

Our sunday was an even more unexpectedly surprisingly fun and rewarding day. Deciding agains a posh-alpine resort we stayed around and had 2 unexpected outings. First we took along a group of guests of the hotel on one of their first round of cross-country skiing of their vacation. Surprisingly, even though their experience skiing was little, it did not take long before their pace actually made us break a sweat! Great, rewarding experience. 

The afternoon sort of escalated from a possible short round with our friend Robert, to a 'topptur' to Dynjefjellet. We made the hours and minutes of daylight left in the day count and plodded our way up (thank god for the short skins under our skies) and quickly down again. The descent was truly magical as we came down to a forest, with trees covered in a really thick layer of snow. Almost as in a fairytale. So quiet, so beautiful.  

See pictures below and some more under the links at the bottom of this post

sweat is weakness leaving the body, right?

Keep on rising....up to Dynjefjell

Dynjefjell - but nearly running out of daylight

fairytale forest

and deeeeep powder:)

See for more pictures and video:

• Venabu Winter blog (updated by Robert)
• video on Vimeo

A year comes to an end....

Valdres (Vestre Slidre) - Kringsjå.

Christmas 2013 brought no snow and temperatures in the plus areas about everywhere. Therefore we decided to leave Femundsmarka (our original plan) for another time. Our christmas gift from our neighbours was actually that we could borrow/use their cabin in the mountains. From the nearest parking lot you need to ski about 50 mins to the cabin:) totally our thing!

So, pulk (sled with supplies) and skies in the car...and off we went!

hers

his

King of the Pulk

Next day was quite windy. The first part of our day-trip we spend discussing the amount of work you need to put in to overcome friction & gravity and thus the forces needed to move yourself forward and upward. (Michiel can explain this in a much more scientific/fundamental way...:)). Then our path turned towards the wind which pretty much put an end to our discussion (discussion....I guess you could rather call it my private tuition into basic statics..)
 After another turn we headed back towards our cabin, with the choice of going over the lake (somewhat shifty in december with snow covering the ice and a history of improper cold..), going alongside the lake (safe, but slightly boring) or going through the birch forest (heavy, powder, up and down, no straight lines and unexpected bumps and dips). Take a wild guess where we ended up..

playing in the birch-forest

 Day 3: Sunshine. Yeah! It didn't last very long but long enough for us to get some nice snapshots of sunrise on the mountains :):):).

good morning sunshine

Kringsjå - the cabin

going back over the lake

 After we packed everything and skied back to the car, we drove up to Vaset to play around in the snow for a few hours there too. Luckily skies cleared up again and the colors around sunset are just....WOW!

Sky on fire

purple haze