Hallingskeid - Finse

How lucky am I? It just so happened that I’d been invited to give a breakfast lecture for the student society in Bergen about the topic of my BA: Norwegian female foreign fighters to the Islamic State. And a free train ride right to my trailhead right afterwards! I love how life works out sometimes.

Right. First attempt: red wax. Skiing down from the train station on a cringy slope to reach the ski track. Holyshit. Red wax clearly not cutting it. Wave those flailing chicken arms like a maniac to not fall on precious face. There was no way to look even remotely upright to salvage my image in front of the dude sitting outside his cabin - no doubt laughing his ass off watching me. I just wanted to sit on my butt and inch my way down the pure ice. Mountain skis have metal edges to prevent you from slipping on icy downhills, but my whole ski could have been metal and it would not have made any difference. After some more flailing and gut-wrenching slips, I was finally down on the tracks and could begin my journey eastwards. Ah, no less slippery on level ground, alas. Soft wax to the rescue! Sticky gooey soft wax all over hands (bearable, for now).

Sweaty mess after 1 km. Those glasses tho

It was crazy hot. Wet strands from my braid clung to my face as I tried skiing with something faintly related to elegance on the crystalline snow, melting in my wool layer. The sun baked me from above, the snow from below. Traction was bad, but not terrible. Luckily the terrain was forgivingly flat. It felt odd to start at 14 in the afternoon, completely alone in the mountains save a few grouse even whiter than the snow. The Bergensbane train tracks drifted away on my left as I plodded up and around hills for hours, my skis getting increasingly slippery despite the soft wax I added semi-regularly. The “I’m an Arctic explorer and the coolest person ever” feeling was fading fast as I boxed through sastrugi and inched my way down slopes to avoid falling on my face and rearranging its features to resemble a pug…

The sun dipped lower into the west and all softness froze out of the snow. Even soft wax became useless, the rock-hard ice beneath my skis scraped it right off after a few meters. My shoulders burned with lactic acid as I staked over flat plains for 4 km, until I leaned into my poles and groaned loudly in pain and frustration.

I’d been skiing since I was 2 years old. And these conditions surpassed anything I’d ever encountered. The only way to gain any traction on ice like this is by putting on ski skins to increase friction a thousandfold. The snow might as well have been soap for all the forward motion I could muster.

Exhausted, I staked slowly onto a big lake and… called my dad. Pan pan pan. What to do? This was one of those “Go back to bed, Liz” moments. Nothing to do but persevere, nowhere to go but forward.

Sticky from sweat and sunscreen, I crawled into my dorm bed at Finse. After crossing the lake, I bought skins at the cabin, which was brimming with activity. Two lovely girls in my room allowed me to test their full-length skins in the twilight on the frozen lake. Well… I’ve never worn snowshoes, but I can imagine it feels like full length skins. There is no glide. Absolutely nothing. It was horrible, but I had no choice if I wanted to keep moving across Hardangervidda. Luckily my roommates and I shared a wonderful evening outside in our puffy coats – I was digging into freeze dried chicken fried rice while they made a mess trying to cook hot dogs on their ancient primus stove. I felt a tickle of “I’m an Arctic explorer and the coolest person ever”-feeling watching the stars pop into the night sky, steam from my tea warming my cold nose. Somewhere, someone is hiking the Te Araroa trail, and they don’t know that I’m thinking about them. Maybe someone is thinking about me too. I am not backing down yet.