Norway - Round Two

A beautiful spot to ski

The call of Norway and more cross-country skiing could not be ignored for long. This is an activity I think I really want to keep doing. And since a lot of the people you see participating are at least 60 years old, it does bode well for the future. We wanted to go to Lillehammer for our second Norway trip, it seems to have unbelievable cross-country trails, and is quite easy to get to from Oslo. It turns out that the weekend we wanted to go was also when the youth Winter Olympics where on, so rather than be shown up on the trails, we decided to go somewhere else.

We ended up in Geilo which is a little ski resort half-way between Oslo and Bergen. The train trip to get there is an event in it's own right, since you are travelling through some amazing scenery, and so much snow!!!

I think we really started to cement our cross-country skills on this trip, we were still sticking with classic skiing. This is the super dorky looking style where you kick your leg back to get propulsion. The first day was a bit of a struggle, just trying to get the technique perfected a bit more. There was this awesome loop around this frozen lake, including a world-class biathlon course at the end, which we could walk to from the hotel. It ended up being 15km around, which was quite a ways given our technique is not that great.

A church by the lake

Great weather for a ski

The scenery was beautiful, but I was spending most of my time trying to get a good glide happening. You really want a nice glide, otherwise it's just an exhausting shuffle. Luckily the weather was beautiful for it, we ended up going around this lake quite a few times on our stay there. It was a good place to practise without anything too scary, plus it was also a nice place to be.

We got to see a biathlon in progress too, that was pretty cool, but man that looks like a high-intensity spot. They are full on sprinting around the course, and they are going faster than you could run, it really is incredible their speed. Then they have to come in, still on their skis, lie down, and shoot three targets. It looks insane. And yet school kids would come out to this course and that seemed to be their PE for the day. No wonder these people all look so healthy. Their national sport is something almost equivalent to marathon running.

The hut in the middle of nowhere

As well as this awesome lake route, we also went up into the mountains for a wilder experience. This was really great, you were really out in the country-side, no roads or houses, just skiing through forests and fields. Then halfway round the loop there is this hut selling hot chocolates, tea, coffee, soup and chocolate. With this super old lady in there who didn't speak any English (our first instance of this happening). I'm not sure how she got out there, I assume she skied, which is really quite incredible.

Where are we?

On the way back it was a bit of a white-out, heaps of snow falling. Luckily the trail was well-groomed, and there were heaps of people about. So it wasn't like we were about to ski off the trail. It was definitely the best day we had skiing, and I feel a lot more confident about trying more of this style next time, getting out into the country-side a bit more.

We also had a long discussion about skis with the hire person. I think we definitely have to at least try skate-skiing, which is kind of like inline skating, but with skis. And they also have mountain skis, which are a bit thicker and heavier than classic cross-country skis, but you have more control with the snow plowing. They look a bit more like alpine skis. So many options, and winters are so short! I'm almost looking forward to next winter to get back out there!

The frozen lake - was a bit freaky crossing this - you could hear grinding