Minitour in Bergssjø

We went out for one night ski tour in the next village from Geilo. From our home this area, called Bergsøjen, (Mountain lake) is 55 km away by car. We left on the tour late in the evening on Tuesday and parked the car on last parking lot, 24 km from village called Ål. That's the next village from Geilo and the last 24km was pretty much uphill all the way. Bergsjøen is located over 1000 meters above the sea level. Still the reason for choosing this spot was to avoid really hard wind in Hardangervidda area in Geilo. We didn’t really succeed in avoiding hard wind though.

This winter has been one of the warmist in 30 years in the area. On Tuesday it was +5 degrees in the village and a bit colder up there. We put our telemarkskies on with climbing skins and skied just randomly towards to north, only about 500 meters away from the parking lot. It still felt like being ”somewhere in the middle of nowhere”. There were no other cars around and we saw nobody on the whole trip. January is pretty quiet season here. You still need to pay little parking fee to a box, which was about 6 euros for 24 hours. I feel that it’s really fair for someone keeping these roads open for the whole winter.

We sat up the tent and made some hot chocolate, ate some sandwiches and went to sleep to a huge sleeping bag. Lucky me I have found a boyfriend who’s willing to sleep in a tent, any time of the year and actually likes it. And suddenly he’s now asking me to marry him. In a tent, in the middle of nowhere, in my favourite country, Norway. My answer was pretty easy: Yes!

The next morning we woke up and saw that the tent place was pretty good. Luckyly the tent had still handled hard wind. By afternoon though it was enough for a 17 years old Hilleberg Nallo 3gt tent. The game was over. Well….it had loosen a colour red already much earlier and been in wilderness guide school use for 15 years….so for even all the best equipment there is some time limit. I will still look for another Hilleberg tent and really getting the understanding why you want the tent to be good quality in norwegian wind.

We did some avalanche resque training and a tiny little ski tour. Antti was for his first time off-piste skiing with his telemark skies. So there was really no need for huge slopes. But for sure it would be great to get some snow. I don’t think I ever before skied so much out of snow with my telemark skies, than what we did this time. Anyways the same rule repeated again. It’s always good to get out and do some camping. Even though the conditions could be better for some longer ski tours.