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Category: Norway

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 🙂

December Light

December Light

The lack of photos recently has a lot to do with the weather: we had so much bad weather and storms lately! That prevents me from going out, but it also means really hectic shifts at work and a very tired Hanneke 😉 It makes it extra nice when the weather turns pretty, exactly when I have a day off from work 🙂 Yesterday, I took the cable car to get some nice photos of Tromsø in the December twilight. The sun doesn’t come above the horizon, but when the sky is clear, the colours are incredible!

The two panoramas below are taken exactly one hour apart: one at 13:00 and one at 14:00. In the earlier one you can see what I call Arctic Light, but which actually has a fancier name: the Belt of Venus, when you get this intense pink band on top of a darker blue one. The dark one is actually the shadow of the Earth 🙂 Just an hour later, the pink has disappeared and we’re in the Blue Hour – my favourite time! I love it when all the twinkly little lights are on, while the sky is still this deep deep blue.

Just before 13:00/1PM, this is about as light as it gets here. The pink band is called the Belt of Venus, with the shadow of the Earth underneath My favourite time of the day, the blue hour: all the twinkly lights are on, but the sky is still a deep blue

I really need days like this, to charge my battery and pinch myself in disbelief of the beauty of Northern Norway! What a city to live in…

The city centre of Tromsø, with behind it the airport and behind that the island Kvaløya Towards the southern tip of Tromsø island, with a nice backdrop of Kvaløya mountains One last photo before I need to warm my hands around a cup of hot chocolate!

After 1.5 hours of taking photos, I was frozen to the core, and I hurried to the cafe to wrap my hands around a hot chocolate 🙂 A perfect day!

(and right now it’s raining… 🙁 I’m so glad I made the most of yesterday!)