{"id":29031,"date":"2023-03-07T21:38:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-07T19:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cris.lovell-smith.com\/trips\/?p=29031"},"modified":"2023-03-12T09:03:20","modified_gmt":"2023-03-12T07:03:20","slug":"storbekkha-almost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cris.lovell-smith.com\/trips\/2023\/03\/storbekkha-almost\/","title":{"rendered":"Storbekkhøa Almost"},"content":{"rendered":"

After the weather hadn\u2019t delivered in the weekend we decided to take Tuesday off as yr.no was painting a positive picture of how it might be. So Monday evening after work we drove South to Oppdal and then onwards to the B\u00e5rdsgarden DNT Hut<\/a>. We arrived in time to boil our dinner, pasta and chickpeas, what a treat.<\/p>\n


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The blue sky had been installed in the morning and so had a big ball of burning gas. Despite this it was cold, some degrees below zero as we set off snow that crunched under our skis. I skated along the cross country track while Johannes opted for skinning. We headed further up the valley to the end of the road and continued on the cross country track into the hills. Unfortunately as we continued we began to leave the blue behind and instead a blanket of high cloud arrived slowly. We decided to stay on the ski tracks for as long as possible rather than going up the ridge, which we\u2019d initially planned on. We left the tracks and started to skin up through the deep powder. I cut the the trail as the light became flatter and flatter. It began to snow as we climbed. We stopped periodically to check the map trying to decide which would be the flattest ascent. It was avalanche warning level 3 and there was a lot of fresh snow.<\/p>\n


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\"Arriving<\/a>
We drove to the B\u00e5rdsgarden DNT Hut, a couple of hours from Trondheim, after finishing work in the evening.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
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\"Skinning<\/a>
There was plenty of blue sky and sunshine as we left in the morning. Our destination was the mountain Storbekkh\u00f8a, which was accessible from some way up the valley. We skied along the freshly prepared cross country ski track heading up the valley.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
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\"A<\/a>
It had snowed a lot over the last few days and there was plenty of fresh powder everywhere.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
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\"The<\/a>
Unfortunately as we ascended the blue sky slowly began to be replaced by high cloud.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
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\"Lots<\/a>
As we left the ski tracks the visibility was already low and it got worse as we skinned up towards the summit trying to take the flattest slopes to avoid any avalanche danger.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n


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We picked our way up between rocks to a flat plateau West of the summit. It was another 160 m of climbing but there wasn\u2019t anything in the way of visibility. We decided to bail. Annoyingly my Garmin Forerunner had mysteriously lost my track after we\u2019d left the trail but we had most of the ascent. We skied down sticking closely to our ascent tracks. They were sometimes hard to make out even just a couple of metres in front of us. The snow was great but with so little visibility it was hard to really make the most of it.<\/p>


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\"Not<\/a>
End the end we couldn’t see much more than a few metres ahead of us and as it had also began to snow and was generally less pleasant we decided to turn around about 160 vertical metres below the summit.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n


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\"Back<\/a>
We followed our tracks back down. The snow was great but we couldn’t really make the most of it due to the low visibility. Back down on the cross country track we began the long 8km or so slog back to the hut.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
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We arrived back on the ski track in the valley and began the long slog back to the DNT hut. All-in-all the tour was quite long, around 20km. We ate at the hut and watched as it began to clear somewhat. We began the drive back to Trondheim with patches of blue sky again.<\/p>\n

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