Snow-Shoeing - or yet another revelation

Dave at the top - trying to shelter from the wind

We went on a snowshoe expedition, this was with the same company who did the cross-country skiing, Tromso Outdoor, highly recommend them. We had the perfect weather for this walk, it was beautiful blue skies, not a cloud anywhere. Most of the other days had involved either snow or rain, or at least clouds, so we were super lucky.

We were back on Kvaloya, it really is a pretty island. There was a 400m peak we were going to climb. This was actually a really easy walk, mainly because the guide ahead of us was breaking all the trail. But snowshoes are great, you don't sink in so far, and they have these crampon-type spikes on the bottom, which means you are really stable on ice. I love them, we have to plan some snowshoeing expeditions here in the UK.

Just a beautiful day, in a beautiful location

Great mountain ranges all around

The climb was only 400m, so pretty easy. And the weather so nice, that this was a like a walk in the park. I'm glad we hadn't gone the day before, they ended up in the middle of a blizzard, that would not have been fun!

Whilst we were out we saw some dog sledders heading out for their activity as well. It was kind of cool watching them, they even crossed the road, that was the cutest thing. You can hear the dogs from a long way, they were all the way down in the valley and still clear as anything. We were wondering if that would be us in a few days, since we had booked in for a full days dog sledding. It looked super fun if it was going to be us. The key with visiting these polar night places, and what all the Norwegians say, is that you got to keep active. And that's what we found, so long as we were doing exercise every day we found we didn't really miss the sun. It's true that our eating patterns were a bit all over the shop, but I think that's because all the activities ran over lunchtime, since that's when the sun is "up".

Approaching the top

"Sunset" peaking over the ridge

I think these photos show most closely what the days were like in Tromso, as you can see it's definitely not pitch black, those skies are definitely blue. And with all the snow around, even after "sunset" it's light enough to come down off the mountain without head torches. There were quite a few people climbing the mountain at the same time as us, though they were doing it carrying skis. There is this thing called ski touring, which I have only just learned about, which seems to involve climbing these mountains and then skiing down them. I guess it's because they don't have the chair lifts that you get in Switzerland, but you have a lot of mountains. It looked pretty fun, but I don't think I will ever achieve that level of ski. There were even people doing it with a tiny dog. Apparently they would have to wait for the dog to catch up as they went down.

The road at the start

Ski-tourers on their way up

When I saw the dogs in Norway, just normal pet dogs, not work dogs, and what they would do, I feel the dogs in London are really coddled. Here they all go around with little jackets on through winter. There they would be out climbing snow covered mountains, or pulling their ski-clad owners along. It's impressive to see what dogs can put up with, and seem to enjoy.

The climb was beautiful, and easy, and even, dare I say it, warm. And then we hit the peak. It was this gale force wind, which was picking up the snow and driving it into your face like ice. We could hardly even rest. And Dave and I made a tactical error of waiting until we were at the top before putting on our additional layers for the walk back down. That really cooled things down, my hands were blocks of ice. Definitely a lesson learned there. Put the warm layers on just before you get to the summit. Especially if it's lovely and still where you are on the route up. And then some how most of the way down was in this same howling wind. I'm not sure how that worked given the total lack of even a breeze on the way up.

This was the whale-watching fjord, totally different with blue skies

Moon-rise over the mountains

Sunset at the peak