Silly Billies Return to Roam

Well a bit late again, but never mind! Here is my (Chris's) Portugal O-ing blog update. After another busy week at work, drinking lots of yummy expresso's, I was off to Portugal for some orienteering training and competitions. This was my first orienteering of the season, so I was a bit unsure how I would go, but excited to do some competitions, escape the snow and hopefully enjoy some warm delicious weather. Me, arrrr! For the first 4 days I was based out on the coast about 2-3 hours north of Lisbon running the Portugal O Meeting races. These included one world ranking event (WRE) which is acting as a selection race for WOC this year. Alistair landels and Juliette were also entered for these races, so I got in touch and managed to end up staying with them, their young baby Adam and some of Juliette's French clubmates. On arrival I was rather disappointed by the weather, about 5 deg and cloudy, but the orienteering was very good. Lots of top runners (about 250 in mens elite...

Two weekends ago I was left all alone in Trondheim, after Emily departed for a few weeks holiday back to NZ. Fortunately there have been many fun activities to entertain myself with, such as some more skiing and orienteering. Having just bought myself some new ski-touring/randonee racing ski's I was excited to hear there was another race happening some hours drive from Trondheim. So on Friday afternoon I set off towards Høyanger with Bård and some of his friends. Høyanger, a small village beside Sogndal fjord, turned out to be a 9 hour drive away. However, other than getting a rather sore bum, this was not too bad. Høyanger ski area. You can even see the little red hut we stayed in. The next day was a bit cloudy, but otherwise fine for the first day of racing. This was an individual race, taking about 1.5hrs and going up and down 3 small mountains. I managed to hit some more rocks again on my new skis, but luckily I don't think I damaged them too badly. The skiing was quite ex...

Chris racing in the Scandinavian Ski mountaineering Champs in the weekend - looking surprisingly coordinated! Fresh powder at Kårvatn I wasn't going to do third 'wicked weekend' post....but we just had such a great weekend up at Kårvatn again that I had to put some more photos up. There was a lot of fresh powder and the skiing was awesome. Having only been on the skis once two weeks ago I was not so game to take part in the competition, but Chris being Chris decided to have a go. I went up and took some photos and enjoyed the delicious powder downhills! Chris making his way up the first climb Up the zigzags After a short downhill competitors put the skins on again for another big climb Up that! Chris was a bit disapointed with his speed uphill, many Swedes and Norwegians were much faster. He also had problems with his skins, having them fall off five times due to poor technique and getting snow all over them (bad idea we now know). It seems having a skin fall off is al...

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, mounte...

A couple of weeks ago we had a huge hoar frost in Trondheim, so I included a few photos of the ice laden trees. Looking out our front window, brrrrrrrrrrrrr. It was about -20 and very damp! White trees everywhere While the weather in Trondheim continues to be miserable and rainy, we have managed to escape for the last two weekends in a row into the mountains. The ski tracks round Bymarke (where we live) are up to no good and the streets are slippery and wet, so getting away is the best thing to do right now. Our first trip was a Norsk Skialpinisme Sammling (Norwegian Ski Mountaineering Group Training). We know a couple of the guys in this group through the Wing Orienteering Club and they kindly allowed us to tag along and borrow some fancy ski gear for the weekend. We drove up to Kårvatn, a small farmstead set in a very steeply sided and pretty valley. There we stayed in a DNT Hytte which is owned by the farm, and also the location of Gudmund Kårvatn's extremely impressive ski b...

One week after our return from Sjusjoen we were ready to put the cross country skis on again for the National Ski Orienteering competitions down in Trysil. We had to leave Trondheim straight after work on Friday because it is a 5 hour drive south. Trondheim had been experiencing an extreme freeze all week with temperatures hovering around -20. This was making biking to work an interesting experience! As we drove South we passed through Røros, a small town which is located in a kind of depression, meaning it frequently records extremely cold temperatures. When we passed through we hopped out of the car and had our first experience of - 34! Trysil is a ski resort quite high on a mountain side, and interestingly the temperature actually steadily increased as we climbed up - at the ski resort the temperature was a balmy -14. We were staying with the rest of the Wing contingent, and had two very nice apartments to stay in, located right beside the start area. Chris finishing his course T...