Kjell's Trip to Friisvegen 2012

Tuesday 27. March 2012

Double-click on photos for large pictures.

Report from Kjell’s Trip to Friisvegen March 2012

The old man has been out skiing again:

Last year I had a hard time getting to the campsite, with a heavy sled, deep, wet snow and steep slopes, so this year I found another solution. I hired a man to pull me to the campsite with a snow scooter (with permission from the Ringebu Mountain Authority). This allowed me to arrive at the campsite at 2 PM 13. March. Last year there was very little snow, and this was the case now too. So I started the trip one month earlier. This time I could put the tent on a spot of bare ground covered by reindeer moss, which made it less cumbersome and a lot drier. It was good to be in place early in the day, because a tent rod broke in the strong wind and had to be repaired. Also, the ground was hard, with stones and ice, so it took me a while to fasten the pegs in the ground.

The weather was varied, with strong winds. Nevertheless I managed to get quite a few pleasant trips. As before I built a wall of snow blocks to shelter the tent. This turned out to be necessary. The night 18./19. March there was a blizzard, so I was stuck in the tent. Had to get out a few times to shovel snow away from the tent, otherwise it would have been buried. I listened to several audiobooks. However, it is not a pleasure to listen to the noise of the flapping tent walls, even though earplugs made it more tolerable. In strong winds the gusts are strong also inside the inner tent.

After the snowstorm I became aware of a mistake I had made. I hade placed food to be cold in a hole in the snow, without marking the place. After the storm, it had been buried under a thick snow dive. It took me almost three hours to locate and dig out the food.

During the ten days of my trip, I only met one skier (photo), in addition to an inspector on snow scooter from the mountain authority. He was out looking for wild reindeer.

When I went back the 22. March, the weather had turned mild and the snow had become loose and wet. So it was time to get the hell down from the mountain, and to the Norwegian spring where I wake up to birds singing outside my bedroom.