Scuppered!

Apologies for the radio silence. It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster here in Norway for Mrs P and I since we left the mountains two weeks ago due to my injury and the weird weather.

DIAGNOSIS

Back in Oslo I visited a doctor to take a look at my injury (she couldn’t help with the weather). This revealed a couple of possible issues the most likely of which is a groin strain.

Where I had prodded and pressed around the area and failed to find any area of tenderness the doctor knew all the right buttons to press (or in this case bells to pull) and I came away feeling distinctly uncomfortable. I will spare you the description of what this groin strain feels like. Suffice to say, it would leave roughly 50% of the world’s population thinking “Poor thing. That sounds uncomfortable.” While the other 50% screwed their eyes up, winced, crossed their legs and involuntarily moved their hands to their groin whilst thinking, “OUCH!!!!” in block capitals.

PROGNOSIS & PLAN B

Ten days of strong anti-inflammatory tablets and rest from pulling a heavy pulk was prescribed with the advice to return if there was no improvement.

So, we came up with a plan B. We would move to a place called Geilo (pr: yai-low) in the mountains (800m) with the idea of heading north once the injury had healed sufficiently.

Aside: We saw the below statue of Churchill in Oslo and his words ring true even today.

With all the depressing stuff in the news about the poor people of Ukraine, it is such a shame that Trump, with his slim grasp on either history or geopolitics, is unlikely to take heed. History will not be kind to him.

Still a highly thought of figure in Norway, Winston Churchill says it all: “Come then, let us go forward together with our united strength.”

Leaving Oslo with high hopes for plan B.

SCUPPERED - PART 1

Sadly, despite resting (with some minimal gentle skiing) the injury showed no signs of improvement.

I called my doctor in the UK for some advice.

Who refused to speak to me.

Because I wasn’t in the country.

For a telephone appointment.

It was a long and depressing conversation with the receptionist akin to banging one’s head against a wall.

I phoned a private doctor in the UK, who strangely was able to advise. The advice he gave, based on my description, was that it could be unnecessarily dangerous to head away from civilisation. Whilst he considered it more likely to be a strain than a hernia, if it turned out to be the latter we could find ourselves with a potentially life threatening situation if it became strangulated. He advised getting a scan to rule out the hernia possibility.

Unfortunately, try as we might, this proved to be impossible in Norway, even privately. So our plans to return to the mountains for a tour were pretty much over.

PLAN C

It was as plain as the curls on Mrs P’s head that we were going to have to cut our trip short.

So we came up with a plan C.

We would use our time (a week or two) in the mountains to do some local day tours practicing our new approach to future trips.

A NEW APPROACH

Our new approach was to both pull pulks on rigid rigs, not single bungee line like I have used previously.

We bought yet more kit. Mrs P, whose initials are ALP, now has her own pulk which has been christened ‘ALP, Amanda’s Little Pulk). She is very happy.

The plan was simple…

…split all of this (plus personal gear) between two pulks and lose the heavy rucksacks.

Mrs P demonstrates the new setup

An expert in the making

We did manage a practice run beside the lake near to our apartment, which was pretty successful, though rather short because of the lack of snow.

The next part of plan C was to take this practice up into the hills above Geilo.

BUT…

But plan C was soon to go the way of plans A and B.

We already knew that 2025 was turning into a really bad snow year, sadly though, it was only set to get worse. Temperatures well above freezing and very little precipitation meant that there was precious little snow at 800 metres and even over 1,000 metres the snow was very patchy and often just hard ice.

Mrs P ‘skiing’ on grass

On top of this and a poor forecast for the next few weeks, we had heard from an Australian guy who was ahead of us on the trail, that the snow was melting even high in mountains and that he and a friend had both fallen through the snow into holes down to the rivers beneath. This is potentially extremely dangerous stuff and does not make for fun touring.

Winter here normally lasts until the end of April/early May, but this year is proving to be very, very unusual.

The following two photos were taken on roughly the same spot almost exactly 2 years apart to the day.

Geilo, March 2025

Geilo, March 2023 - A typical March day

Rumours abound, “Never before in my lifetime…”, “Not since 1950…”, “More than 20 years ago…”

The locals keep apologising to us, like the weather is their fault.

SCUPPERED - PART 2

The long and the short of it is that we can’t tour because of my injury and even if we could it would not be fun because of the snow conditions. Add to that the fact that we can’t practice usefully around Geilo because of the snow conditions up high and you quickly come to the conclusion that we are scuppered.

We could move a long way north, where it is better, but still not great, but we have decided that there is no point throwing good money (and time) after bad.

We are returning to the UK.

It has been a difficult decision, but we believe the right one.

We are very grumpy.

But, in the words of the great Arnold Schwarzenegger, “We will be back!” Stronger, tougher, better prepared and in a more normal snow year.