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

Cold Feet & Warm Geese

walking down from Gaustatoppen

Last weekend we opened our snow season with a trip to southern Norway's highest peak Gaustatoppen. Weather forecast was great: temp below zero ( to -10), blue skies and sunshine!

Drove up on saturday morning and decided to camp out (try our winter sleeping bags a.k.a. our flock of Geese) on saturday and walk up to the summit on sunday. Arriving on plateau height it turned out to be very windy. The night started out slightly restless due to the wind on the tent. 

Sunday we woke to another beautiful yet windy day. The walk up through a layer of snow was cold with a strong head wind and a temperature of -10 deg. This combined with a pulled muscle made us decide to turn back and keep the summit for a next time. Unfortunate, but it gave us another learning experience: Don't forget to also check the wind forecast!

Good Night (looks calm doesn't it…)

Good Morning!

Italy part 2: Tuscany & Alps

This blogpost should have been published waaaaaaaaayyyyy sooner, but somehow it was still only saved as draft and not published. Well, better late than never:

No plan without changes

As you may have noticed we did not deviate that much from the  original plan during the first week, however we could not have ended our holiday further from expectations like we did in the second part.

Why?

We are completely incapable of lying on a beach...

Tuscany: S. Giminano, Siena, Firenze, Cecina

After having driven down to San Giminano, we found a nice campingplace, nice tree cover (quite a neccesity in the burning sun even in September!) and the promise of a swimming pool.

After a quick tent setup we explored San Giminano that evening. Too bad the rabbit that Michiel had for dinner turned out to be quite the escape artist as it leaped back out at night.

Siena is an intriguing city, built on hills you find yourself in a big square at one moment and lost in narrow alleys at the next. We were also quite intrigued by the colours, lanterns and flags that mark each different quarter in the city.

Firenze is a classic, whith the highlight that we got away with not having enough cash to buy 2 icecreams by being able to pronounce "nocciola" correctly in italian (and some female charm off course...Grazie.  Prego)

After 3 cities in 2,5 days I was fried and ready for some pool-side action. Put on the bikini, hiked to the pool which was luring me in... Only to discover that the fence was locked. Turns out that after September 1. Albeit being over 30degrees outside, the "season" is over and thus the communal pool closed.

Bummer.

Off season or not, I was still melting away and had a serious need to cool down so off we went towards the coast, as there is a swimming area that does not close at end of season: the sea:-). We spent the impressive amount of time of no less than one full day on the beach near Cecina!

Siena

San Giminano

After a drive through Cinque Terre (which is truly amazing!) we ended in another beach-resort. This time with yelling 14-16 year olds, too many cars and parasols all the way to the horizon.....

BAIL OUT! 

Onto the highway, up north to the Italian Alps, we landed near a town called Chiavenna. 

Ok, truth be told, we'd been there for 2 days a couple of years ago... So we knew there was good coffee, ice cream, supermarket and friendly people there...

From there we went out on some day-hikes, some longer than others, depending on our form of the day. 

Fornohütte (CH)

Hike to Forno glacier 

enjoying Alps to the MAX!

Ut i skauen

Fire, Food, Friendship:

Enjoyed a hike in the forest (close to Roa) last week upon invitation of our friends Marianne and Jon Kristian. Made a proper campfire, stuffed our faces with masses of good food and had a great time! see pictures below.

Dolo-mighty (Italy week 1)

yeehaa!

We have to admit it. We have a weakness.

We have a thing for coffee, good food and Icecream. 

Allthough we also get/make plenty of that for ourselves at home, nothing beats going to the source.  The origin of espresso, pasta, nocciola icecream etc.... Italy!

With one big extra bonus: a mountain playground...

The plan was quite simple: fly to Milan, rent a car, drive to the Dolomiti, get some via ferrata kit and guidebooks and enjoy ourselves on the rocks, then drive south to Tuscany to see some cities, hang out in a swimming pool and relax on the beach. The thing about plans is that they're there to deviate from. So what happened?

The quick visit to the La Sportiva factory outlet proved fruitfull: with new shoes and via ferrata kit we were ready as far as equipment was concerned. Those guidebooks however proved more challenging as we only found italian books and some very limited german books. If only we would have ordered them online before we left.

Lagazuoi tunnels

Anyway, we were never in Cortina d'Ampezzo or so we try to tell ourselves. After the short overnight stay we quickly bailed out and drove back towards Val di Fassa. At the Passo di Valzarego we stopped to have a look at the Lagazuoi tunnels.

These tunnels were dug out by the Italians in the first World War to be able to take the top of the mountain that was being held by the Austrians. More about the background can be found here.

We were amazed by the infrastructure that had been established within 5 months in those days inside the mountain: from cable cars,nengine rooms, barracks, gun posts, trenches, sentry positions etc.

Via Ferrata del Finanzieri.

The next real via ferrata was the via ferrata del Finanzieri that leads tot the summit of a peak called Colac. 

As we have some sports climbibg experience, the local mountain guide office ensured us that this route would be no problem for us, even though being the first real Via Ferrata ever for us. 

The route winds up the westside of the mountain, after the relatively easy start there is a bit more challenging bit with a ladder and the portion above it. Must say that 'challenging' in via ferrata are typically overhangs (with ladders) where it's heavier on the arms (mostly if you have a backpack on), or bits where there are little and/or very small footholds.

way up; find the sheep

nearly there, Sella group in the background

The summit provided great views of the Sella, Marmolada and Catinaccio/Rosengarten massifs. Especially the Sella group looks a bit like a huge sand-castle like you made on the beach when you were little.

Michiel on the Summit, Sella group in the background

on the way down..

Via Ferrata Della Trincee 

Day after the Colac/Finanzieri we set off to the Via Ferrata della Trincee (trenches) which is located on a ridge of volcanic rock just north of the Marmolada group. Steep and technical start up to a knife edge, after which (about 30 mins of technical work, the guidbooks grade this route as an "4B") the route eases. In the second part we found again a lot of WWI remnants: tunnels, sentry posts, remnants of buildings/constructions. 

last bit up to the knife edge. again Sella massif in the background

loose canon...?!?

Via Ferrata Franco Gadotti

Wel,.... this one actually never happened as this route transfers into another Via Ferrata towards the Sas Aut, which was closed. As just going up and down one section did not really attract us we returned to the car, drove a little further to the start of another one we spotted on the map. Only to discover that that should be one of the hardest around. Not being in top form that day we also left that one for what it was and settled for a cablecar ride up and enjoyed some Kaiserschmarren with a view!

That more or less sums up our week in the Dolomites, will post some more pictures on Facebook soon and stories of week 2 & 3 of Italy here...

Stay tuned!