Ice and snow and ski

It's been a hectic, adrenaline, excitement and emotion driven week.

A week ago today I was ice climbing in Hemsedal. A unique way to celebrate my birthday actually - halfway up a frozen waterfall. I haven't had so many birthdays like that in my time...

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And then four days of fantastic skiing in Hemsedal ski resort. As we seem to be, we were blessed with good weather. Tuesday it snowed all day, Wednesday dawned foggy, but we rose above it in the ski lifts, to be met with a stunning view - bright blue skies and sun one way, and a sea of cloud and fog the other. Thursday was just superb. But Friday was bad. A small price to pay.

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There were many a jolly laugh we had, and many a clod of snow to pull out from inside my jacket, or down my ski pants....

There was a stupidest-thing-done-in-the-day-competition, in which the winner had to wear some 80's style sky blue ski pants, a pink skirt over the top, and a fluro pink/orange 80's ski jacket. The first winner was Trond. You see, going through the flapping gate to the ski lift, trond managed to get one ski, weaved in and out between the metal poles, with the plastic flap flapping backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, between his legs. It was so well wedged that Halgeir, the school principal, had to unclip his skiis for him to free him from it's dreaded clutches!

Another high contender was Hanna Beate, who, not realising the implications, rested her ski pole over the safety bar infront of the chairlift. Reaching the top of the mountain, the safety bar was lifted. Up went the ski pole, to get stuck jam tight in the roof of the ski lift. Try as she might, Hanna Beate couldn't get it out, and only succeeded in snapping her superduper telescopic ski pole. Oh, and she skiied into the only tree within about 200m of her :)

And finally, came Halgeir himsellf. Admittedly there were others who had done stupider things that day, but we just couldn't resist the temptation to see Halgeir, our 50-late-something principal dress up in the shocking outfit. Really, all he did was ski into the back of someone whilst skiing through some forest. But it was fantastically funny him wearing the costume. Every 8-man chair lift trip up the mountain he took, he was the only person on the lift. Not a single sould dared ride with him!

And as for me, I had my share of ridiculous doings. One trip down i will never forget. Me and my friend Pål were skiing through some forest, which kept getting tighter and tigher and steeper and more deep with powder snow as we went. So tight that there was only one possible path downwards we could take. Now there was a tree stump in front of me. Maybe half a meter tall, and 20cm wide. Now there was absolutely no reason to fall, but fall i did. With the back section of my skiis around one side of the stump, and my legs and body around the other. Now it was relatively steep in this section, meaning that because of gravity pulling my body down the hill, my skiis were 100% trapped! There was no way out. Thankfully Pål was there to save me. Which he did, not without a fair deal of laughing!

We finally made it through maybe 300m of forest, taking maybe half an hour!

Many other fun things happened, and I feel I learnt a huge amount in telemark technique that week.

Fantastic week.

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