Ski Trip

Well as you have probably noticed, it has been several months since I last posted in this thing. However, I do have legitimate reason for this. Namely, not much has happened since my last post. I did travel most of western Europe, enjoyed three months of winter school at Holsby, visited Gothemburg, Stockholm, and the Baltic sea. After all Europe is mostly boring cities and old churches so I thought I would spare you the details of said old churches and boring cities.

But in the last few weeks something truly interesting did happen over here in Sweden so I thought I should share it with you all. We enjoyed our third trip of the year with the Discovery program up in Lappland, which is in northern Sweden.

Our trip started the Sunday after regular winter school ended. We prepared gear and food for several days beforehand and finally set out early Sunday. We rented a large Ford european style hutterite van and started our drive up north. Another guy came along to drive and give us weather reports as he has to work up north away. We stopped in Stockholm to pick up our Finnish telemark ski guide who would be joining us for the trip. She has worked at Holsby for a term or two so had a few connections to the school. We then continued to drive until late evening and stopped at the base of large hill on the Baltic coast. After an hour hike or so up the hill we reached a small cabin at the top where we would 'spend the night'. Which really just means that the two girls on the trip slept in the cabin and the rest of us rolled our stuff out on the snow under the stars, which was nice as well. Speaking of which, our team consists normally of 8 people, four girls, and four guys. Unfortunately, one girl couldn't come along because of breathing trouble in cold climate and two others backed out days beforehand because of illness. So our team was greatly reduced to the four of us guys and just one of our female team members. Back to the story, we woke early the next morning and continued our drive north. The town where we stayed for a few days to learn telemark and sleep is called Tarnaby and apparently all the good downhill skiers to come out of Sweden have come from this one small town. At our arrival in Tarnaby we went straight to a small church building where we would stay the few days before our trip. The next day we went straight to the ski resort at Tarnaby and rented our equipment. Tragically, telemark skiing is a sport reserved for those with small feet. The first day out I received the biggest pair of telemark boots currently in production, size 31.5. After skiing a day in the boots I concluded that I would be able to join the trip, but I would not have toes afterwards. As we thought that this was an unacceptable price to pay for a few short days of skiing we went back to the ski shop to look for alternatives. They ended up giving me the largest alpine boots that they had and a mixed binding. The boots fit well and the binding also allowed me to participate in our trip. The skis had an alpine/telemark mixed binding. Which means that the binding was a regular downhill binding that pivots in front of the toe. So for the touring portion of the trip I would have a loose heel and be able to move just as well as the telemarkers and for extended downhill portions i could simply lock my heel into place and ski downhill normally. So that was a huge relief.

With our skis all figure out we were finally ready to depart to the backcountry. We ran into some problems the first day in form of pouring rain down at the base of the mountain. Thankfully, the rain let up my 11am and we were able to set out. Unfortunately, we lost enough time that we wouldn't be able to reach basecamp the first day. After riding the chairlifts to the top of the hill we were able to start off into the backcountry. After a few hours of skiing we reached our first camp next to a small cabin in a mountain valley. We dug our tents and kitchen areas into the snow and set up camp. The next day we left and arrived at our basecamp site early in the day. We spent the next sixish hours digging. Digging in tents, digging kitchen areas, digging snow caves, digging bathrooms. Being fairly exhausted after so much digging sleep came easy, whether or not you were basically sleeping in a large snowbank. The weather wasnt totally agreeable. It was windy, snowy, and worst of all, warm. The daytime temperature hovered somewhere around zero the whole trip. So when the snow fell, it instantly turned to water as soon as it touched you. Making for a very very wet week. Our second day in camp saw us head out to hike up the largest mountain in the area. Unfortunately, some extreme wind and snow forced us to turn back several hours into the trip. On the way back whiteout conditions made navigation difficult and slowed us quite a bit. Also, this hefty wind decided to switch direction at the last second and blow from the opposite way from the days before. So many of our snow walls and windbreaks were useless or worse. So for the rest of the day we dug. Dug more walls, better kitchens, bigger snowcaves. A pattern started to emerge in that this trip would be more digging and less skiing. That evening left us extremely wet and cold. When you would sit in a windbreak or snowcave any snow that touches you would immediately melt. Then as soon as you stood up into the wind you would immediately freeze solid, making for a really interesting situation. The following day was a decided rest day (not that we had done much skiing anyway). So we headed down into the valley to a small cabin/hostel thing on a major snowmobile route. We hung out there that day and dried a lot of our gear in their drying room. Our driver, Peter, came up and cooked us moose fajitas which were awesome. After the afternoon there we skied back to camp and readied for the following day. We planned another day trip the following day but unfortunately it was so windy and warm that we decided to stay in camp the next day. So we basically chilled in snowcaves and dug some more. This last day was the conclusion of our trip and unfortunately we didnt actually get to do much ski touring but had a good time nonetheless. Our final day out was going to be pretty intense. We woke up at 430am on Tuesday and literally broke camp. There is this slight paranoia that they have over here, we literally had to destroy everything that we had made. Our snow caves were under almost two meters of snow and we had to dig off the roofs, stomp it down and then fill in the holes. It was exhausting and took a long time. By the time this was all done we were able to set out at about 7am. We skied until about 230pm and made it back to our home base. We showered, saunaed and then ate one more meal there before heading out. We left Tarnaby at 530pm and drove until 1am. On the way we saw some awesome northern lights as we drove south. It was a great cap to the trip and and a first for a lot of the Europeans with us. At 1am we stopped at a rest stop and slept on the ground outside the bus. We then woke up after a few hours and continued our drive back to Holsby.

All in all it was a great trip, the weather wasn't always great and we didn't do as much skiing as planned but it was still a great time. This spring the Discoverry trips come pretty fast so hopefully I will post in this thing more. Bye!

The view from our first rest stop on the drive north

our tent

unfortunately this lovely waterbottle took a tumble at some point in the climb to basecamp.

Backpack at the start of the trip

view from the top of the ski resort

Swedish Military training.

First Camp

Windy/Snowy

Small Snow twister

again for some reason

the valley

Our Camp

German Chris

Our viking Alfred in the wind

Down

Six days of Grease

donezies