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Author: Hanneke

I started my first blog when I left the Netherlands (my home country) for an internship in Alaska in 2004, to keep my friends and family updated on my adventures over there. Little did I know it would be more than 13 years before I'd move back to the Netherlands! I spent a year in Toulouse (France) before starting a PhD in meteorology at the University of East Anglia in Norwich (UK) in 2005. That's when I started this current blog, first in Dutch but I soon switched to English. I really enjoyed life in the UK, and was actually planning to stay there after my PhD, but "life is what happens when you're busy making other plans" and I ended up moving to Tromsø in Northern Norway in 2009. Tromsø is a photographer's dream, surrounded by spectacular mountains, with the light ever changing from the midnight sun in summer to the dark days compensated by aurora-filled nights in winter. I learnt Norwegian and got a job as a weather forecaster - I got thrown in at the deep end, doing radio interviews and speaking with fishermen with way-too-strong dialects straight from the beginning, before I was anywhere near fluent in Norwegian :D I survived though, and slowly started to do some research on the side. I got more and more involved in research projects and in August 2015 I moved 2000 km south, to Oslo where I started working 100% as a researcher. A year after moving to Oslo, I met Michiel at a music festival in Brussels :) and we started to travel very frequently between Oslo and Rotterdam, where he lives. You can't do that forever though, and I soon realized I found the perfect "excuse" to finally move back home, something I had been considering many times before. So since July 2017, I'm living in Rotterdam! I'm actually taking some time off before finding a new job, and I'm looking forward to lots of adventures in the near future - so stay tuned!
Snarby to Nonsbu

Snarby to Nonsbu

Yesterday the weather was stunning, and I was lucky enough to have the day off! Paul was able to take a day off work as well, and we decided to go for a long ski trip. We started from Snarby and headed towards Nonsbu. It was so sunny and so beautiful, everyone we met was smiling widely – it was a perfect day 😀

Sun, sun, sun! A great day for a ski trip!

We stopped at Trollvassbu (only 4 km from Snarby) for a quick lunch in the sun, and then continued towards Nonsbu.

Playing with shadows Paul testing his new skies

I kept taking photos of the sunny views 😀

I couldn't stop taking pictures of these views... Better than a day at the office, right? :-)

Paul had left a fancy design thermos bottle at Nonsbu last Sunday which he was keen to pick up. I wasn’t sure I wanted to ski that far (it’s a 24 km round trip), but in this kind of weather, and perfect snow conditions, it was a piece of cake 🙂

This looks so much fun! A school class was camping near Nonsbu, digging snow holes to sleep in...

Someone had made ice art by arranging icicles from the roof of the cabin upside down in the snow – pretty!

Ice art - someone arranged the icicles from the roof next to the cabin Icicles and a great view :)

After eating dinner at Nonsbu, we turned back towards Trollvassbu. By the time we got there, the last sunlight was painting the mountain tops a very pretty pink…

Paul in front of Nonsbu Skiing past Trollvassbu at sunset

The moon was out and everything was blue and pink…

Trollvassbu Impressive sunset at Trollvassbu

It quickly got colder when the sun finally set, but the twilight colours were fantastic.

Beautiful twilight, with the Lyngen Alps in the far distance (on the left) Back at Snarby after 24km of skiing

What a perfect day!! 🙂

Kvitfjellet

Kvitfjellet

For a long time, we’d been planning to visit the ski tracks at Kvitfjellet on Kvaløya. We tried once, in early December, but then the conditions were like this…

Skiing through a snow storm in December

… and we didn’t get very far. We kept checking a website called Skisporet, which shows you when a ski track has last been made, Kvitfjellet is one of the areas that’s included on this website. After 10 days or truly horrible weather (and horribly busy shifts, click here if you want to see me on the Norwegian news, talking about the bad weather, and looking exhausted 😀 ), it finally cleared up. Avalanche danger was high, so luckily Paul was happy to join me on a cross-country ski trip on Kvitfjellet.

Ohh how spring sunshine warms the soul… even though it was bitterly cold that day! We had a fantastic day in the mountains, with a welcome lunch break at the skihytta halfway along the 10 km long loop.

A frozen mast along the way - iPhone picture so not the best quality The Skihytta - what a view!!

On a sunny Sunday, you’re not going to be alone here…

View from the hut :)

After some sandwiches, chocolate and a hot drink, we were ready for the last part of our trip.

Time for chocolate! The beautiful track leading away from the hut

The mountains soon turned pink in the sunset, it was beautiful! And I was really impressed with the track through this beautiful area 🙂 I wasn’t “allowed” too many photos though, as Paul was cold. It was around -15 up there!

Sunset coloured the mountains pink Paul was cold ;)

The last 4 km was downhill all the way, which was a LOT of fun 😀

From up here you can see Malangen on the right and Vasstinden on the left Ready for a fun downhill at sunset :)

I don’t think this was our last visit to Kvitfjellet 🙂 It’s a long drive (almost an hour), but totally worth it!

Elvestua

Elvestua

A week ago, we went on a short trip to Elvestua in indre Troms (inland from Tromsø). It takes about 1.5 hrs to drive, and then it’s a 2 km ski along a tractor road to the cabin. The cabin is quite old, but really cosy 🙂

Elvestua in indre Troms Real forest - we don't have much of this around Tromsø :)

Inside the door fishermen had drawn outlines of their catches – an impressive sight!

The cabin is used a lot by fishermen - and they have drawn their catches on the doors for years - impressive! The cosy cabin at night

Right below the cabin is Øvre Fjellfrøslombolaen, a small lake or rather, part of the river that flows out of the larger lake Fjellfrøsvatnet. Due to a stable high pressure over Finland/Russia, all of January had been cold and dry – some places even had 0.0 mm of precipitation all month! The lake was frozen solid, and we had good hopes that there would be good skating conditions – our reason for coming here. At first we walked around the small lake in front of the cabin for a bit.

Øvre Lombola, the lake/part of the river right below the cabin

It’s strange to walk over ice so clear that you can see the bottom, but it also made it very easy to see that the ice was more than thick enough to hold us.

Memories of autumn... The ice was so clear you could see the bottom of the lake

We thought we could follow the river upstream to the larger lake, but the fast-flowing river was open in lots of places, and it wasn’t easy to follow it on the banks, so instead we went there by ski’s, following the forest road that had been used by snow scooters.

Beautiful ice! I love photographing the patterns in the ice

Fjellfrøsvatnet looked beautiful…

Fjellfrøsvatnet

Unfortunately it was very windy (and cold!) on the lake, and we also found that the ice was very uneven and bumpy – not that much fun to skate on actually.

The last light on Hahttagaisi / Hattavarre Paul on his skates

Still, the views were nice and we skated around for a while.

Find Paul...

That evening, the aurora put on quite a show – it was incredible to watch it reflected in the clear ice of the lake. What you can’t tell from the photos though, is that the wind was incredibly strong on the lake. Combined with the slippery ice, it would easily blow us along and it was hard to stop 😀 I had only my lightweight tripod with me, so you can imagine what happened to that 😉 – in the end we each held on to a leg of the tripod with our feet, while shielding the camera from the worst of the wind gusts with our bodies. Still, sometimes the wind would blow Paul, me AND the tripod along the ice – but luckily we did manage to get a couple of sharp photos 😀

A fantastic aurora show! The aurora got really bright... Lots of green bands

It was a great little trip, and we might come back to the cabin in summer 🙂