The weather wasn’t inspirational and I hung around inside before lunch with Johannes, who had to work. The others went out to ski some tree line runs up the valley.
After his meeting, Johannes and I headed out to do an easy tour near Nordbotjn. The weather had other plans and we turned around before starting the tour, as it was snowing heavily from a grey sky. A quick check of webcams North in the fiords showed that the colour blue was in vogue. Perfect, we drove to Skibotn, a small town along the fiord and close to street signs with Finnish names. We were not far from the border. An unsuccessful drive up a narrow, steep, snowy and very slippery road followed. I managed to get the car stuck in snow at the side of the road while we were trying to abort. Out came the avalanche gear, namely our shovels and after a few minutes of digging we had the car free. Johannes took over in the cockpit and managed to turn around at some private property at the end of the road.
Back down in the village, we parked not far from the hill and began touring from there. The roads were covered in snow so we skinned along them and then followed a (probably) cross country skiing track for a while. We looped back following ski tracks that were probably from a bunch of Italian guys we’d met in the car park. The tracks took us up a walking trail complete with little bridges and stones to scratch the underside of our skis. The snow improved as we climbed and it wasn’t too long until we had a view back down to the fiord through the forest. We went a little further until we reached a flat area. The sun was setting and we removed our skins and got ready to ski down.
We glided back down over the very good snow and managed to ski back down the walking trail without causing too much damage to our skis. A very short tour but nice to get out and get a bit of sun.
