The weather was still pretty Norwegian, although it was a little drier. Using yr.no we came up with a cunning plan. And that plan was not to go ski touring. At least not immediately. Instead Johannes and I went climbing indoors in Tromsø in the morning. In the afternoon we headed out for a tour. This time we drove around the back of the mountain that’s visible from our Air BnB and went up to Kjølen, a peak in the same range. I was not overly motivated. It was Norway grey, all the shades of grey, more than 50 for sure. It looked like spring was trying to make an appearance. Not in the sky but in the grass poking through the snow.
We skinned over the side of a lake that was beginning to thaw and headed up into the hills navigating around and over patches of grass and rock. It was quite windy and we could see that the visibility was low higher up. We continued up following markers in the snow. We ascended into the cloud and were reduced to following tracks in the snow and spotting the next marker and checking our phones to find our location. The route continued at a low gradient and we arrived at what looked like the summit but there was a hut marked on the map so we continued. Suddenly a huge structure appeared out of the mist. It looked like some Soviet era building. Below it was a small DNT hut. We skinned over to the hut and spent about 10 minutes in the (heated?) hut talking to a Norwegian guy who’d also toured up.
The snow was wet and our skis didn’t glide well on the descent. Despite this we picked our way back down with just one patch where we had to walk over grass.
