Buren

Buren

One of the reasons we went fishing on Sunday were our sore muscles from a ski/snowshoe trip the day before. Eelke and Roy invited us to climb Buren (802 m), and it was the perfect day for it! A fresh layer of snow, and plenty of sunshine 🙂

Sunshine! And pretty views along the way

I was a bit nervous as I was the only one on snowshoes, and this mountain was a lot steeper than what I’d done before. The first bit wasn’t much of a problem though, and on the steep bits it’s actually easier on snowshoes as the crampons help you to go straight up instead of having to zig-zag.

On the way up Roy on his way up, the views behind us are getting better

On the second half, the snow was quite deep and I started to struggle. Even though we were able to follow a well established track made by all the early birds, I was still sinking in a bit with every step, and that made it quite tiring. Still, I enjoyed the beautiful landscape and the sunshine.

It was great to start a bit later in the day, and find a well established track to follow Lunch break

After a short lunch break, I was tempted to give up and let the other three get to the top without me. It’s hard to give up though, with the top in sight and not much further to go 😀 so I just kept going. And I made it! Well, we never made it to the actual top as the last 20 meters are very steep and exposed, and we decided not to risk it.

Three others on their way up. Right above them you can see more people on their way to the top, on the far left the top The top of Buren on the left, impressive drops! Hollanderen to the right, and if you look very closely you can spot the cabin of the climbing club

We had a great view from our pre-top and enjoyed a long break 🙂

Nice break on the top, on the left is the top of Store Blåmann, hard to recognize from here I actually got a suntan from this weekend full of sunshine!

And heres a panorama of the great view we had:

Panorama from the top of Buren

Our shadows were getting longer and it was time to come down… Paul, Eelke and Roy went straight down, while I took the same route as we had taken up, to avoid the very steep slopes through deep snow.

Paul on the top, the island in the back is Håkøya Common view on the steep slopes: mini avalanches

I tried to end up underneath a slope to take photos of the others skiing down, which isn’t easy when you’re a lot slower 😀 but I did succeed in the end…

Roy - concentrating hard :D Paul pretending to crash into me - I actually got scared! Eelke smiling :)

It had taken me more than 3.5 hours to reach the top, but the way down was a lot faster: 1.5 hours. I was completely exhausted when I got back to the car though, this mountain was not quite in sync with my fitness level 😉 But it was a fantastic day!

For those who want to see even more photos (or read about the same trip from a different perspective :D) here is the blog post by Roy about the same day (in Dutch).

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