The weather was very Norwegian. I was not so motivated. We drove to the Tromsø mainland and around the hills to the Breidalelva river. We found a place to park on the side of the road and walked back along it picking a random driveway to start our tour from. We skinned over the wet snow trying to avoid descending to the the river bed. We crossed one part of the river on some old snow at one point and continued navigating through the scraggly trees. We began to climb finally and headed up into a wide flat valley. The light spots of rain stopped eventually and we began skinning up to the left. Visibility was low and got lower as we ascended.
We could occasionally see rocks, from the ridge ahead, apparently levitating in the air off in the distance. Hana said she wasn’t sure whether she was going up or down. It was white all around. With the help of our phones and the compass on my watch we found our way to the bottom of the ridge that leads to Breidalfjellet. We decided not to ascend the last 50 vertical metres along the ridge as the view from the ridge would have been very similar to the view from the saddle, i.e. none.
We took our skins off and began to descend. The snow was wet and heavy and warm enough such that we slid very slowly down the mountain. It felt like we still had skins on and that we were constantly braking. As the slope got a little steeper we were able to put in a few turns. Then it was back to the flat valley where we skated and poled our way down. Some skiing through the trees and then more skating through the white snowy patches. We made it back to the car. Looking up at the clouds, I spied a tiny patch of blue trying to poke through.
