Wicked Weekends Part 2

We decided after our strenuous ski mountaineering weekend it was definitely time for a weekend spent lazing at home..........until Ally phoned and lured us in with tempting images of huts, skis, whiskey and mountains.

So this time we were off on a fjellski tur (kind of fat cross country skis with steel edges) from Prestøyhytte (which we waded into a few months ago in an earlier post) and on to Shutzhytte in the Selbu area.

Crossing a rather unnecessary swing bridge on the way in (you could ski across the river!)

We all packed wildly and furiously on Friday afternoon and managed to get away by the crack of about 5 o'clock. We had a stop off at the huge Coop Supermarket on the other side of town and lost each other in the vegie section for some time - big supermarkets are so uncommon here you forget how overwhelming they can be!

Fortunately it is only a short drive (about 1.5 hours) to get to the start of the route in. In the freezing cold we sorted through way too much food, mounted big lamps on our heads and took of on our fjell skis. The first 2/3 of the route was following quite a nice scooter trail. Then we had a steep climb through very unreliable wind blown snow up to the hut, which we reached in about an hour (it took us three on foot last time when we had to wade through the snow).

Enjoying the skiing?

We cooked up some food and drank a whiskey toast to Ally (it was his birthday!) An alarm was set for 9 o'clock - a nice early sun rise start (-:. We had a big porridge cook up in the morning, and after a bit of mucking around we headed out round midday.

The snow was super difficult because it was so windblown and had a very crusty layer on top. The amount of crashes we mounted up between us was rather comical - Ally was having a very interesting time on his skinny cross country skis. We cruised up a on a frozen river on which you could see frozen stoppers in the ice!

Tim and Ally on the move

After crossing twon more frozen lakes the light was dimming as night approached. We entered some pine forest and our pace slowed as we picked our way amongst the trees. Finally, just as it was completly dark and I was stuck in a big snow drift Ally yelled that he could see the hut, so we crashed our way down to the hut.

The Shutzhytte by daylight

We found a nice little room with bunks to heat up, so before long our hut was warm and cozy. Chris set to work and dug a deep path all the way down to the ground enabling us to access the toilets in crocs only....you would have thought he wasn't even tired!

Having a cozy time in the hut in the NZ polypros!

Leaving the Shutzhytte

Sunday dawned with even a little sun! We got an earlier start from the Shutzhytte because we had to cover about 20km to get back to the car. We made quicker progress as we were able to follow the trails we had made the day before. We stopped for lunch outside some little cabins, but even with our down jackets on we could only stop for about 15 minutes before we began to get very cold.

A few welcome rays of sun

Low light on our way out

After about five hours we finally reached the car, all feeling very tired - this skiing business is hard work! A visit to Statoil to receive a free coffee with our refillable Statoil mug was needed before we set off back to Trondheim for another week 'in the office' so to speak (-: