What is the Opposite of a Resounding Success?

I am writing this five days since we started the first leg of our ski trip across the Hardangervidda (Tr: Hardanger Plateau) , Norway’s largest national park. Let’s just say that things did not go entirely as planned. 

Oh foolish children!

DAY 1: Carrying 12kg on my back and pulling 31kg behind me on Pulky 3 (Mrs P was carrying 10kg, which is plenty) we immediately started climbing the 500 plus metres up onto the plateau. Visibility quickly reduced to zero so we were totally reliant on the gps device (garmin GPS 67i) for navigation. It is quite an act of faith to ski blindly into white for hours on end with no visible reference for up or down and no way of seeing if the ground ahead is rising or worse, falling away in front of you. 

A rare landmark. Look beyond though. Can you see a horizon? It’s in there somewhere.

To climb snow with skis we used full ‘skins.’ These are strips of fabric the length of the ski made of either mohair or a synthetic material. The fibres angle in only one direction so you can slide forward, but not backwards. 

We managed just 11.25km on day one. Rather late, we pitched our tent for the night before melting lots of snow for the water required for drinks and our freeze dried food.

The magic behind getting water is freeze dried water (snow) and a stove. Always remember not to melt the yellow snow!

Minus 6°C, so not too cold. The following day our plan ‘was’ to ski 15 km to a cabin at a place called Hellevasbu, but that was not to be. Mother Nature, it turned out, had other ideas. 

Home for the night.

Baby, it’s cold outside (and inside).

DAY 2:  Similar temperatures, feeling like -6°c with, if possible, worse visibility we managed a paltry 8.6km in five and a half hours. Rather than pushing on and possibly having to camp on either a frozen lake (cold) or beneath avalanche prone slopes we pitched our tent on a flat spit of land early. 

Garmin kindly provides us with a weather forecast by satellite link and the following day, we discovered, was not a day for skiing. Rain!!! We are told that it never rains above 1100 metres in winter here, but that’s what we got.

DAY 3: So we spent a grumpy day alternately snoozing and melting snow for drinks and food and digging the tent out of the heavy wet snow that began in the early afternoon.

I also seem to have picked up a groin strain (can you ‘pick up’ a groin strain? Like I drank from a cup that another person with a groin strain had drunk from). 

Dinner is a freeze dried meal.

Anyway, a decision was made to turn back. The weather forecast for the next week was pretty bad. More rain and or wet snow with low cloud and so terrible visibility. We would run out of fuel and food at the rate we were going. 

DAY 4: We had one day to ski the 20km back to Haukeliseter before the weather once again deteriorated. The forecast was for broken cloud and light snow. So we woke early at 5am and broke camp. It normally takes 2 hours from the dreaded alarm to the first shuffle of skis, but today was different. It took the best part of an hour just to dig the tent out. The rain and wet snow followed by freezing temperatures over night meant that the pegs were now well buried in hard frozen snow and ice. We finally set off at 8am. 

Our frozen in tent.

Finally ready for the off and at last, a view.

But visibility was good. Suddenly we could see where we were. A vast desert of white. A frozen snow covered lake only discernible by its flatness. Cornice bedecked hills and beyond the light wind, silence. Nothing moving except us.

It was a very long and tough day and as Mrs P said, it was strange to ski back through terrain we had not been able to see with the thought, ‘How did we get here?’ in our minds. In places the wet snow clung to our skis making forward movement difficult. 

Slogging up yet another pesky hill.

My tough as nails wife, the inimitable Mrs P takes, a well earned break.

We were caught by a group of 3 Germans at about noon who thanked us for leaving them such an easy trail to follow. Now it was their turn to return the favour and off they went, leaving us in their annoyingly youthful wake.

The final slog before the interminable descent. Deep joy!

Descending the 500+ metres off the plateau was never going to be easy but being able to see all the steep and not so steep sections made us marvel at how we had ever climbed it three days before. 

After 20 kilometres and 10 long hours we finally arrived at Haukeliseter Fjellstue (mountain lodge) at 6pm. The last 1km and 200 metres of descent was particularly tough taking almost 1 hour as it was so difficult to negotiate with Pulky. It was two very weary skiers who shuffled into reception and thankfully booked a room. 

Those four days were a really harsh initiation into backcountry skiing for Mrs P but she handled everything like the tough cookie she is. Her stamina never fails to impress me and her ability to pull me from occasional bouts of the blues is remarkable. 

After showers and food we didn’t so much go to sleep as pass out. The bliss of full bellies and clean sheets. 

And so, here we are, on the bus back to Oslo. It’s not over though. We have some ideas for continuing. We will meet with the inimitable Trond in Oslo who never fails to give good counsel and encouragement. I will visit the hospital to get this rather uncomfortable strain checked out, just in case it is something and to see what they advise (a more sensible beach based holiday for example). 

Are we having fun yet? To be honest, no. Our first foray into the winter wilderness has, as the title of this blog suggests, been the exact opposite of a resounding success. But we didn’t die and there’s always tomorrow.