Rotterdam (or Anywhere)

We’ve been very lucky again with the weather last weekend! The forecast for Saturday was so good that we decided to have a go at getting up Tromsdalstinden, the 1200m high mountain we can see from our flat (see this photo). Paul has been fascinated with getting up there ever since we’ve been here, and I kept saying there was NO way I would or could go up there on ski’s… I agreed to give it a try but never really believed it was possible. The cable car opened for the very first time last Saturday, and we were on the first ride up 🙂 The weather was really sunny and so clear, you could see very far – so beautiful! We steadily climbed up and the views just got better and better…

Finally we reached our first top, at about 800m. Hardly anyone around, making your own tracks in the snow that was glistening like a blanket of diamonds… incredible! I really enjoyed it.

But from there you have to get down to 500m (fun descent!) and then up again. We had already been skiing for more than 3 hours and I was getting tired. And I just couldn’t get up the next bit, I tried very hard but it was a real struggle. We realized we weren’t going to make it to the top of Tromsdalstinden, but we wanted at least to get to the next top – Rødryggen at 776m. Finally I told Paul (who had to wait for me all the time) to go to the top alone so at least he could show me the pictures afterwards 😉 I’ve never had to actually give up on getting up a mountain (not that that’s very impressive – I never climb any challenging ones anyway) and it was quite difficult to “admit defeat” So Paul took this panorama from there, quite amazing! Tromsdalstinden is the one on the left. I have renamed it to “the Beast” now… I will conquer it one day, but I think it’ll have to wait till Summer!

Our way back was not so much fun, we were quite tired (not used to skiing so much yet), the descents very steep (and we still can’t make turns), it was getting dark, we didn’t know the way back very well… We finally got back at the car at 20:30, completely exhausted.

So we took it easy the next day and just drove to Lyfjorden, a tiny village from where we went for a nice walk on the beach. Below you can see the village and a cooker we found abandoned at the beach…

The beach was really cool, there were lots of interesting ice formations. Especially those “ice grapes” were beautiful!

Many of the rocks on the beach had “ice hats” and Paul had fun with those…

We walked around a point and we thought there would be some kind of path, but at times we had to climb over big rocks. Later we walked through a forest, with beautiful lichen growing on the trees!

Very nice day! The weather is still good, and I’m hoping that it stays like that for a bit longer, cause Nem is coming on Saturday! She will stay for 4 days, I’m really looking forward to her visit! I’ll probably take lots of photos, but I am also going back to the UK with her next week. I’m meeting my supervisors, then taking a ferry to the Netherlands and finally fly back to Tromsø from Amsterdam – just in time for Easter! But hopefully I’ll be able to update my blog before that 🙂

We finally bought ourselves some skis! After a long time deciding what kind of skis we wanted, we finally went for fjellskis with small skins (attached underneath the skis, for going uphill), Telemark bindings and leather Telemark boots. The skis are quite narrow (67mm) and have metal edges so in theory you can turn quite well when going downhill, but this needs some more practice/skills. We have never done Telemark skiing so we still have to learn the Telemark turn, it will make going downhill a lot easier. Though the snow here is often so thick that going downhill isn’t scary at all – it slows you down and it doesn’t hurt much when you fall.

The weather this weekend was beautiful, plus we recently got a car – time to explore!

On Saturday we went to Ramfjorden. This is a fjord that freezes over, even though the water is salty. It’s quite impressive to see the sea ice edge, it’s very straight! There were people on the ice, so we thought it would be save… But I guess you need skis (to distribute your weight) cause when Paul stepped on it without them, he went through the ice with both feet! So he was quite wet and we decided to go home first to get dry socks for him before going skiing. But I first took some pictures there of course 😉 The last two are of some huge icicles we found hanging from one of the cabins at the fjord.

While at home, I took another photo of the view… just can’t get enough of it! We’re getting more and more sunlight now, it’s really nice.

Then we finally got to try out our new skis on the tracks at Tromsdalen (in the valley on the other side of the bridge). It was beautiful there at sunset, with the mountain (Tromsdalstinden) turning very pink.

The great thing about our car: the skis easily fit in the back and you can sit in the van to change shoes etc:

On Sunday it was sunny again, and we headed for Movik, also on the mainland. The ski paths there are really nice! Not as busy as Tromsdalen and very beautiful… We first skied to a lake (Movikvatnet), and then further up. In the first photo you can see the lake, and the next photo is taken from a lot further up:

It was so beautiful up there, amazing views and nobody else around. We did meet another couple up there at some point, they were really friendly. Too bad we had to turn around to get back to the car before it was getting dark! There’s lots of huts around so we’re thinking about doing a multi day trip another time.

We took lots of photos from the top bit (almost 400m high). The last photo is taken back at the lake on our way back to the car. What a nice day!!

So that was a busy weekend! We’re really tired now, but I can’t wait to go for another trip 🙂