Hurrungane skiing

Anti and I went to the Hurrungane Fjells over Easter. It was a good trip but also very stressful at times due to the high avalanche risk. This year relatively little snow has fallen in the traditional places. This, coupled with long periods of settled cold weather, with little or no winds has produced a double whammy deadly snow pack! This is depth hoar and then facets! Shocking. Anyway... depth hoar (Begerkrystaller as it is called in Norway) forms between the ground and the bottom of the snow pack. Amazingly as it may seem even in cold Norway the ground under the snow pack does not freeze but generally holds around zero, and with a relatively thin snow pack a high temperature gradient (1 in 10) gives a good environment to grow depth hoar and facet crystal. With no wind and blue sky each day you can also get surface hoar, just a fancy name for frost. If this gets buried then you have the number one slippy death surface. One group of these would be bad news, but this year we have all of them! To add to this we now have a steady wind! And this blows snow into a dense slab that sits on top of all this naughty business. Hello white death.... This as you can imagine.... has been playing heavily on my mind. NRK the equivalent of the BBC has being telling skiers to stay on the ridges.



Day 1) Lauvnostinden. We started late and had to skin up the road to get to the start of the ridge. Ridges are the in thing with so much depth hoar about. Gullies are the place of the white death. First thing I noticed was how little snow there was, but I saw the avalanche debris so this focused my attention again. You had to pick a touring path at micro topographic level with care, turning this small depression or that slight steeping and head to the ridges or exposure of boulders (but being aware that triggering on depth hoar can happen near focus points like boulders or thinning of the snow pack. We continued... the ridge is actually a series of elongate ridges separated by flatter areas. Every-time I left one ridge and had to ascend to another by a small face my heart would start pounding away, and I would become hyper vigilant to my surroundings. We continued, the weather became poor and the visibility started to deteriorate. We started up the ridge, it became steeper, and I was hyper aware that it terminated onto another face, which we could follow to the summit. This face would make ideal skiing but in these conditions sitting at 30-40 degrees and being so open was completely out of the question. I agonized a bit... and then focused on a logical argument... a series of questions... are there weak layers, YES.... is facets observed... YES both depth and surface... weather.... Poor... poor visibility..... YES.... difficult navigation...YES..... Party..... Anti is a good skier but has no avalanche training with a transceiver... and I have very little..... Red lights, red lights sound general alarm all head to quarters. Once I made my mind up that was it I turned Anti and myself around and headed back skiing very defensively. We skied from boulder to boulder, one at a time, waiting and watching. We met two girls who were also like us getting very frightened by the conditions. We teamed up. As we huddled on a relatively flat section of ridge, the snow pack whommpped..... This focused my attention again. We made a plan, teamed up and played leap frog down the slope.... I was on alpine and somehow got lumped with leading the line. The poor flat light made it difficult to read the terrain and Anti and the girls who where on telemarks fell a lot while I on alpine skis had a more forgiving ride apart from one point when I fell over just standing still! On the last steep ridge I went first (I tried to get out of it, but there was no takers) and as I got to a boulder the ground whoompped again, and I heard a small crack whistle off.... about 30-50 above me the girls waited, Anti just below....and then suddenly I heard high pitched shouting SKRED SKRED...... SKRED..... by the side of the ridge was a cornice, the collapsing snow pack had triggered the cornice about 10m in front of them. Everything changed then... the ridge is supposed to be safe, it is, but we can remotely trigger avalanches from it.... I ski down... at each relative safe point I bring them down.... I look at each small slope and ask the question... if it goes what is the worst that could happen.... make my decisions… then go... to the left I see the debris of the avalanche we triggered.... large blocks, enough to kill a large party.... I feel sick.... the flat light, poor visibility and fear make my head swim but I focus and carry on, just two more slopes and the valley below. We getting better at this, we no longer speak and each slope is passed with no problems, but evidence of old avalanches are ever present. A good day, lesson learnt.... I understand Depth hoar better now... I understand it is possible with extreme caution to travel through complex terrain relatively safely if you play by the rules... I found out my Norwegian is good enough to lead a group down a hill in poor visibility through avalanche terrain.

Day 2) Dryhaugstinden.. We spoke to the mountain guide in Turtagrø Hotell and it would seem only 3 hills are doable with caution. There seems to be a lot of micro terrain navigation needed to keep safe. Well if the visibility is good we can go, but if it’s poor then we need to make changes to our plans. The weather is good, but the top of the mountain is in mist. We go... at first I am over eager and motor off and suddenly find myself on increasingly steep slopes (between 30-40 degrees), a stupid mistake by just following someone else tracks. I have to stop Anti and tell him I´ll go first on one section, the slope is steep and it’s a traversing line, I should know better. Why is the ego so large we find it hard to change our plans! If the slope goes, it will be a rough ride and on to rocks. I shout back to Anti to wait until I am off the slope. He follows when I give the all clear. The girls from yesterday follow and when they catch up they say what I was think about slope. They also point out this was roughly the route the guide told us to take the day before! Another lesson learnt. We push on, the slope is good and easy angled and we start the long drag up the North ridge of Dryhaugstinden. It’s a long drag, and after 2 hours we come to these two frozen waters. Anti asks the question I did not want to think about as I have been here two times before. I tell him, we have another 600m or so more vertical height to gain and we have only reached half way. Welcome to the Jotunheim, these are big hills. We push on, some snowflakes and poor visibility, but the ground is good. Some guys come down, one telemarker crashes, head over heels. We all laugh including him. We carry on and eventually reach the summit. We climb the last part to the North summit. I feel envious when I see two people come back from the true summit with climbing gear, but I have none so I must just hide my envy and turn to my skis for comfort. We start downhill, occasionally hitting some rocks through the Norwegian powder (light wind slab to you and me), but suddenly... I am into that zone... the twenty degrees slope is becoming increasingly orgasmic in condition.... I check Anti is following the visibility opens up, the sky is blue the sun low enough to give a good contrast.... and for about 30 mins of sweeping turns... I am supreme... and all worries are gone... and I am alive, with each turn brings another turn, the ground is soft, I drift from one turn to the next. The point when, is unknown, I stop thinking and just become.... I am.... and that is all is needed. We are in the moment. I am in the moment.


Day 3) I slept badly. The Lavvo tent was battered by the storm last night. We struggle to get it down and packed in the car. The road is almost blocked by wind blown snow. We drive home.