My northern playground: February 2007

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Around the start of February this year our class went on what was meant to be a 4 day winter trip on skiis, in the snowy spectacular area of Tafjordfjella.

Here's some quotes from an email i sent:

we were all pretty chilly. and thank our lucky stars, but our teacher was
feeling pretty darn cold too, and gave us the option of staying inside the cabin
if we liked, because of the cold. hmm a choice. stay outside in the freezing
night, with just a thin tent protecting us from the elements, or have a cosy
night in a warm cabin with beds and a log fire? there is no choice! cabin it
was! and thankfully, because i think we would have been seriously cold, and not
got much sleep if we had stayed out - we looked at the thermometer outside the
cabin, and yes, it was hovering just below minus 30 degrees. MINUS 30! cold :)

so up we woke the next morning, ate our lumpy porridge, packed up and set out to
our next destination. but not before looking at the thermometer - minus 35, no
less, no more! we walked on our skiis for maybe 45 minutes, covered around
2.5km. getting chillier and chillier by the minute. i had frost all around my
face - it looked like we were all wearing white mascara - the frost was so thick
on our eyelashes. i pulled my neck warmer up over my nose, and it actually froze
to my eyelids. that was a new experience! but admittedly, though i was chilly in
my toes and fingers, it wasn't terrible, and i would not have thought it was
minus 35. but it was. and some of the others were feeling it badly. torbjørn had
lost feeling in his toes and nose, the same with jorun, and our teacher øystein
was not feeling that warm! so we weighed up our options - push on another 8 or 9
km, risking frostbite, justr to get to our destination, or retreat to the cabin
and warm up again. cabin it was - and a good decision i think. so we warmed up
for an hour or so and then turned, our tails between our legs, and skiied
the 12km back to the bus. but that was an incredible trip back to the bus. the
sun came out, and the world sparkled! there was glitter in the air - dry snow
blowing around catching and scattering the light.

we reached the bus again - things hadn't gone so well for it! we managed to get
one door open - the rest had frozen shut. we managed to start it thankfully. but
i can easily say that the first part of the trip home in the bus was the coldest
i had been the whole 2 days! you see my friends, the antifreez liquid that keeps
the heating system working, had, in fact, frozen :). it is designed to go down
to minus 25, but it could not cope with that final 10 degrees! so there we were,
sitting with our down jackets, beanies, neck warmers, gloves in the bus
shivering with our teacher constantly scraping the ice which was forming on the
inside of the windscreen from the moisture we breathed out. well, we drove for
20mins or so, then pulled into a mountain hotel. we went inside and warmed us
for an hour or so, whilst various people from the hotel helped us warm up the
bus enough to get the heating working! that was great - free hot chocolate and
coffee from a automatic machine for us! and it was lovely - we found where the
heating cables in the floor were, and lay down on top - so lovely!

by the time we got going again, it was dark, and we were hungry.
so the only thing to do was call up a pizza restaurant in stryn, and order 8
pizzas to be ready for us when we arrived!