Silly Billies Return to Roam

Chris is the red person furthest away in the third row - you can just see a little of him Just a quick post to update you on last weekends activities - a trip to Kårvatn for the first in te Norwegian Cup Randonnee Race Series. There were races on both days which Chris planned to compete in. I was planning a more relaxed version skiing in the 'recreational' category on Saturday with Line, and going for a fun excursion up the hillside on Sunday with Ally, Paja, Tomas and Line. Chris just before he races up the hill Chris loved the race on Saturday - 2 times 1000m ascent and descent back to back. The fastest guy took a crazy 49 minutes up and 6 minutes down! Then he repeated a similar time the second loop around. Chris's times were pretty respectable and he managed to beat and scare quite a few Nowegians. He was up in 57 minutes and down in 10! Not bad for an old one (-: Line and I finally make it to the top of the climb We went out for a really funky dinner on a farm on Sat

Just a few pair of skis each for our trip away, not excessive at all (-: Running late as usual we drove out of Trondheim on Dec 28 headed for Oppdal to meet Tomas, Paja and Anders in our little, silver, string-of-unusual-noise-mobile. We meet the others (who were waiting patiently in the Rema 1000, and then followed them up the Storlidalen to Anders' wonderful cosy cabin in Storlia up the head of the valley. Looking up valley you can see the steep rock faces of the Trollheimen mountains. His family's cabin is very modern and so snug and comfy, complete with a little sauna. We ate a quick lunch then drove back down valley to go up Okla on our randonnee skis. Anders and Tomas were braving fjellskis instead. Starting up the hill We climbed steeply and very slowly up - the snow was super light and deep and impossible to go upwards through, there was no base underneath though so one's ski got tangled up amongst the rocks and trees on the ground. After 1.5 hours up we had climbe

Rather a lot of snow! The Christmas holidays started only 2 days before Christmas this year, so we decided to stay in Trondheim until the day after boxing day, after which we had several ideas for trips up our sleeves. This year (unlike last year) the best ski and snow conditions by far was actually in Trondheim itself, the rest of Norway didn't have much snow. So we canceled our plan to visit Sjusjoen again near Lillehammer, and decided to head somewhere more local instead. The week before we had a wonderful early Christmas dinner with Helen and Ally - we had a really fun evening, with some little presents, some delicious food and wine, some whiskey and most of all some great company. The days leading up to Christmas were really cold, around -19 on Thursday and -15 on Friday. Nevertheless we got out for a really nice ski both days, the trails around Bymarka were in great condition and we could track (and chase) the groomer using the GPS tracker on the brilliant Skisporet.no websit