May 16

2 Wheels, 2 Planks: Midnight Sun Ski Camp

Pedal powered skiing in northern Norway - Arctic Alps

Since our only real tent-bound day of the trip two Sundays ago on the beautiful and mountainous island of Kogen in northern Norway, we’ve lucked out with nearly 14 straight days and “nights” of mostly clear weather and excellent ski conditions. And as we roll into the last several days of our trip this week, the forecast is calling for more of the same! Perhaps the weather gods have been rewarding us for tolerating their outrageous behavior earlier in the trip…

We’ve got much to report since our last update, but just a few highlights to share for now. As we mentioned earlier, our friend Forrest Twombly headed home after two weeks of biking and skiing with us. Although we continue to miss him dearly, we’ve continued to set ourselves up with one spectacular “ski camp” after the next, by placing our tents/camps at the base of peaks offering tremendous summit-to-sea skiing options. Over the last few days, we’ve been enjoying what we’ve been calling our “midnight sun ski camp”, near the northern end of Norway’s Lyngen Peninsula. From this camp, we’ve had ski-in, ski-out access to a great variety of north/northwest facing terrain centered around a summit that towers nearly 1000m above the sea – with tremendous views of the fjords, islands and open ocean surrounding the peninsula. Best of all, thanks to clear weather, we’ve had a clear view of the midnight sun. Today is the first day that folks at sea level at this latitude can witness the midnight sun, and with Norwegian independence day on Monday, May 17, there are plenty of causes for celebration around here.

We’ve been celebrating in our own way by heading out to ski during the last few evenings at 9 or 10pm, climbing and skiing through the beautiful midnight sunset and sunrise hours, and skiing back to camp around 3am. Back on the beach, with our tents hiding out under a northwest-facing ridgeline, we’ve been able to sleep peacefully in our tents for 7-8 hours before the late morning sunshine pours in.

Up on the mountain at night, the skiing has been dreamy. The song birds are back, chirping and singing away as we begin our climb through the birch forest. Ptarmigans scurry and fly around us higher up in the alpine zone. Snow buntings play above the rocks along ridgelines. Snowmelt can be heard trickling and running all over the place, and rushing in the bigger streams closer to the sea. And the steady roar of the ocean fills the world below.

An unusually warm weather pattern has prevented the snow surface from crusting up at night. This has forced us to avoid many steeper ski lines, due to heightened avalanche risk, but has left us with varying degrees of corn snow on many slopes – ideal conditions for our midnight adventures. If we had arrived to this spot just a few days ago, the skiing at midnight would have been crusty…and loud.

Testament to the great warmth of the weather and sunshine of the last several days, Emily – and then Tom and I to follow – went for a dip in the sea today. We followed suit with a fresh water rinse in our camp-side creek, before laying out in the warm and nearly windless afternoon sun again. Midnight sun skiing, in the tropics of Norway…

After moving camp and pedaling a casual 25km this afternoon, we’re looking forward to another evening ski tour. It’s 8pm up here in northern Norway, and the sun is just starting to get low on the horizon. We’ve got our eyes on a north facing ridgeline above the small village of Sur Lenangen, where snowmelt is threatening to wash out the local bridge, and a local farmer is moving ice and debris from the bridge with his tractor. I am writing this from the small office of the local paramedics, who offered us cold soda and the use of their internet-connected laptop when we stopped to watch the action on the bridge.

Emily and Tom are snacking on some brown cheese and rugbrod outside, itching to ski, so with another clear night upon us, it’s time to head for the hills.

We hope all is well with everyone! Thanks for reading.

– Brian

May 12

Ski Flying Over Avalanches in the Alps

Although this is a bit nutty, with Antoine Montant (a Chamonix-based extreme skier) setting off avalanches as he descends, there’s something about generic antibiotics bronchitis this that is downright impressive… (Thanks for the tip on this Mike B.!)

May 07

2 Wheels, 2 Planks: Blue Skies and Big Mountains

Skjervøy_kyrkje
(Historic photo of Skjervoy – Courtesy Wikipedia)

With virtually no convenient access to internet up here in the countryside of northern Norway, we´d like to thank readers for being patient with our updates and their sporadic nature.

When we left off last time, we had shared with you some tales about a great blizzard we got to experience, before taking advantage of a weather window to pedal down to the docks back in Tromso and hopping on the “coastal steamer” toward some beautiful and mountainous islands near the harbor town of Skjervoy (pronounced “share vay”). Until the Norwegian coast was more completely connected by roads in the 1960s, the coastal steamer was the main life line for the numerous coastal communities along Norways 1000+ mile coastline, bringing all mail, supplies and food along with it.

We landed in Skjervoy at 10:30pm, hoping the region was possibly spared by the intense winds and snowfall we had experienced farther south and west. It turned out the opposite was true, and Skjervoy greeted us with an even deeper snowpack, colder temps and totally snowpacked roads. The night was calm and beautiful, with the mountain landscape cast in a subtle purple hue under the light of the setting near-midnight sun. The sun´s direct rays were still lighting the north sides of several mountain summits, and gradually, the mountainous island of Kogen came into view. Roadless around most of its coast, and dominated by a 4000´peak that offers countless ski lines right to the sea, Kogen is yet another skiers´paradise. Carefully pedalling across the ice-coated bridge that separated Kogen from Skjervoy, we paused under the peace and quiet of midnight to take in the view of the peaks we´d call home for a few days. There was not a car in sight on this weekday night, and while riding away from Skjervoy, it seemed as the though the world was asleep.

The recent snow and blizzard left us with not one scrap of bare ground to camp on, so we aimed for a nice spot in the birch trees several hundred meters off the road, packed a simple trail with our skins and skis, and then pushed our loaded bikes through the snow and into camp. A handful of Kogen´s towering peaks glowed in the midnight light above camp. We found a spot with just 10-12″ of fresh snow, which had been bare before the storm. We quickly shoveled it clear, and pitched our tents on a nice carpet of dry grass, shrub conifer and berry bushes. Sometime after 1am, we were drifting off to sleep.

The next day on Kogen was the stuff of dreams. A nearly cloudless, bluebird day greeted us, and cool temps and the low angle sunlight in this part of the world promised to preserve the fresh powder snow conditions on the cooler, non-solar aspects for another fine day of skiing. Kogen´s highest mountain, Store Kagtinden, stood tall right above our camp, offering a safe and relatively straightforward ridgeline ascent to its lofty 1200m summit. The views reached for 30-50 miles in all directions, with the Lyngen Alps and its adjacent fjord shimmering under the afternoon sun. The snow conditions on the summit pitch were so delectable, we skied it twice before enjoying crispy corn conditions and a 45 degree pitch on the ridgeline descent back to the valley. We toured up the valley to explore a small lake, an old cabin and dozens of tempting chutes and couloirs…most of which seemed to need another few days to stabilize to our standards.

Our crew whipped up an unbelievably tasty thai curry noodle dish for dinner, followed by some hot chocolate and tea. Sleep came easily, and we logged an easy ten hours in dream land. We set out the next day for the far shore of Kogen, skiing up and over another mountain spanning the island, through a birch forest, and right to the shore of the sea – pushing snow into the sea as we came to a stop. After relaxing for a while at the water´s edge, we skied north along the beach for about a mile, before turning back toward the island and ascending a drainage that led to a 500m pass and keyhole leading to the valley we were camped in. Blue skies of the day prior gave way to increasingly stormy weather on this day, and we barely made it to pass before white out conditions in the mountains set in.

Back at the comfort of camp, the wind and snow held off, but not for long. By midnight, winds were gusting 40-50 mph, and by morning, a steady, wind-driven mix of snow, sleet and rain escalated into near-blizzard conditions once again. This time, however, we embraced the storm in a different way – by simply relaxing for the day in our tents. We all needed a day off anyhow, and there´s nothing like being tent bound once in a while, for it gives you a chance to catch up on sleep, read, relax, play games, sip hot drinks, and sleep some more. By 11:30pm that night, the storm eased. Some of us went out for a short ski run above camp, and we enjoyed velvety turns under tempestuous skies. After being in the tent all day, it was a nice way to stretch out the body before really turning in for good.

We left Kogen and the Skjervoy region earlier this week, bound for the heart of Lyngen Alps. We spent a couple of days riding more hours of the day than skiing to get here, and camped one night on the beach – with a great camp fire – directly across from some of the highest peaks in the Lyngen Alps. Wow. Blue skies and big mountains have emerged as the primary force in our lives lately, enabling countless adventures with new friends (including a local ski guide, Jimmy Halvardsson (Here´s a post Jimmy authored about our ski yesterday, too); future ski lodge owner, David, and his wife Anna; Jimmy´s friend Linus from Sweden…and more). Forrest has been enjoying his last few days with us here on the Lyngen Peninsula, and set off just this morning for home in Vermont. Two weeks into the trip, we are now half way through. We were missing Forrest just seconds after saying goodbye, and we skied one heck of a run after ascending via a beautiful Lyngen glacier in his honor….a steep chute, onto a moderately pitched glacial ridge, through another short chute, into a gently sloping face that funneled into a great valley surrounded by peaks towering 1400+m all around us…(Forrest…you would have LOVED it.) Forrest enjoyed his last day in Norway by pedaling 100km back to Tromso, where he planned to stay with our new friend Per before catching a flight home this morning.

We´re currently staying with our friends David and Anna on their beautiful farm outside of Lyngenseidet – camped out inside a beautiful old barn on the property. It´s a a place they are planning to build into a “ski camp” of sorts (Camp Kviteberg LINK) – a comfortable, affordable base for skiers visiting the Lyngen Alps. We bumped into David when parking our bikes near the local school the evening we arrived to the town of Lyngenseidet. There is a small ski area at the school, and we were planning to ski up through the ski area to reach the higher slopes above treeline for a sunset ski tour. He is perhaps one the only locals here who uses his bicycle to go skiing, so it is rather serendipitous that we have all connected. After a couple of nights spent in a beautiful seaside cabin (Koppangen Brygger) at the end of the road north of Lyngenseidet – thank you Alf, Gunnar and Tova!…and Norway Tourism – it´s great to be back to our sleeping bags.

If you are still reading, we hope you are enjoying the updates… With the midnight light luring me outside for a walk around David and Anna´s farm before bed, it´s time to check out…

Thanks for reading. Drop us a line in the comments box if you´d like. Stay tuned for more sometime soon.

– Brian

May 03

Photo of the Week: Powder Dreams

SM01IF70EMB

It hasn’t been quite this deep up here in northern Norway recently, but the fresh snow we picked up during the recent blizzard that welcomed us here had us dreaming of the many great days that Old Man Winter treated us to this past season in the northeast.

May 01

2 Wheels, 2 Planks: Blizzard! in Norway

Lyngen[1]
(Photo: Arctic Alps – Courtesy Wikipedia)

We knew the weather and snowpack might be a touch on the wintry side during the first part of our month-long adventure in northern Norway, so when heavy snow and near-hurricane force winds (read blizzard!) greeted us upon arrival to a mountainous peninsula way out on the coast (along Kaldfjord, north and west of Tromso), we should not have been surprised. Fortunately, we were prepared for this, and even more fortunately, we found a beautiful and rather sheltered place to camp below a cluster of peaks that offered 1000′ of moderately pitched birch glade skiing right above the fjord. After 3-6″ fell during the first night of the blizzard, we found our way into some of the nicest powder skiing of the season…and 2 days later, after 12″ + had fallen, we were in skiers’ heaven.

A highlight of this camp, our first since spoiling ourselves in Tromso – thanks especially to our new friend Per and his daughters and neighbors (lasagna, wild blueberry pie, oh my!), was my late day pedal back to the Tromso airport, just as the blizzard was winding up, to rendezvous with our friend Tom Hite, who was fresh off a plane from Boston – excited and ready to go. Nearly soaked to the bone after pedaling through the warmer, wetter snow around Tromso, I spent an hour drying off in the airport while helping Tom rig up his gear and bike for the 2 hour pedal back to our camp in powder paradise. Tom couldn’t have been more fired up about his month of ski adventuring ahead, and to top things off, the wet snow turned to a nice dry snow as we exited the airport and headed for the coast.

After enjoying the relative safety and convenience of well-designed bike paths for 20km out of Tromso, we faced only 10km of quiet snow covered roads before reaching camp. We were experiencing true white out conditions at that point, but with camp established and with Forrest and Emily having prepared a hot meal for our arrival, life was good. We double checked the staking of our tents, crawled into our tents, and hunkered down as the snow and wind promised us another fine day of skiing in the birches to follow.

Since our camp along Kaldfjord, we have caught the “coastal steamer” to the fascinating island community of Skjervoy, farther north along the coast, where we have set up our second camp of the trip beneath a prominent peak in the region – which we were lucky enough to ski under bluebird skies just yesterday.

With some luck, we’lll have more access to internet soon, and more to report.

Stay tuned.
-Brian