Trip to Geiranger

Early thursday morning we set off to Geiranger to see the fiords. We had the 11.30 sightseeing boat, and if you look closely on the first picture you see a farm close to the waterfall. There it was people living until the late 1960s. We had nice weather and good road conditions. We left Venabu at 7am and were back at 6.30pm, with a short stop in Lom.

Walking program has started

This week the walking program started.

We have 16 Belgians visiting. They have 4 days walking arrangement, and one day in Geiranger to see the fjords and the coastline.

This morning it was a sprinkle of new snow in Rondane. But here it is raining.
It's quite cold, around 6-7 degrees and northern breeze.

The walking programme runs until 27august.

Photo course pictures

Here are some pictures from this weekends photo course. Perfect weather, nice conditions and lots of fun.

Next photo course is the week long course that takes place in beginning of July.

Summer slowly comming

Good morning and welcome back.

Today we start the season with a weekend photo course. 6 persons attends.

And on tuesday we continue with the tour guide course. It's the third gathering and the finals are due.

The temperature is around +10 during day, and quite nice staying outside. It's still some patches of snow in the mountains.

Snow meltdown

A few days ago there was a major avalanche in northern Norway, with 4 persons missing.

And a few hours later, there was another avalanche close to Tretten. So the trains between Oslo and Trondheim couldn't pass. They ran from Oslo to Lillehammer and from Trondheim to Vinstra, in between there were bus transportations.

Today, it is possible to pass with the train, but with reduced speed.

Finally, we don't have the cold nights anymore, and hopefully the snow disappears pretty soon.
It's been a white layer since end of September.

It is still 50 cm snow left, so we need a lot of warm evenings and nights to get the summer going.

Trail net closure

Today we managed to collect most of the bamboo marking sticks all over the trail net.
The only trails left is Brennflya-Gråhøgdbu and Stormyra-Saltashaugen, but they will be collected tomorrow.

The reason why we do it now is that it is cold nights and warm days, so it is a good crust (in Norwegian called Skare) to ski, snow shoe or even walk. So you don't really need the marking sticks anymore. In the Norwegian mountains it is allowed to go anywhere you like :)

Lars (dad) and I collected Eldåbu-Indre uksan and Fremre uksan-Gråhøgdbu today, and as we proceeded towards Gråhøgdbu it was a herd of 40 reindeers ahead of us, which didn't notice us, so they trottled along in a long row until two tourists came along and the reindeers ran away.

End of season

The last guests left yesterday, and the season has been good.
There has been weeks with an average of about 30-40 guests.

The daily temperatures are between -3 and +5, so slowly but surely we are entering springtime.
Even though there is still a lot of snow left, and we got a tiny sprinkle this morning of white snow (not Icelandic ash) we are closing until beginning of June.

Therefore also this blog will not be updated so regular.

Hope you will have some nice days and we see each other again in June.

Perfect days

This week is the week for disabled people and we have 80 persons with different sorts of handicap.
There is activities like ski-cart, tobogganing, skiing or just staying at the veranda letting the sun attack some pale norwegian skin.

The days have been full of sunshine, and yesterday we had lunch grilling in the mountains.
Today we had dog sledging, tomorrow there will be a toboggan race and a ski race, and on thursday there will also be a visit to the mountain chapel.

After the lunch yesterday, most of the people are more or less red iin some way.
So the main thing to remember now is sunglasses and sun creme factor "extreme high".

Troll Ski Marathon 2010

This year Lillehammer Troll Ski Marathon is completed, with a full set of records.

-For the first time, there have been more than 600 participants.

-There was a new time record for men: 3:56:49, set by Håvard Hansen, who also had the former record. Improved by 37 minutes. He used 1:07 on Venabu-Øksendalen.

-For the females there was also set a new record: 4:56, set by Marthe Myhre, improved by 30 minutes.

The weather was perfect, with -4 when the race started at 8am at Venabu, and 95 kilometers later it was a few degrees plus at Sjusjøen.

Wet and heavy snow conditions

The conditions are quite strange at the moment. The snow is so wet, that everything is a struggle to ski. But looking on the bright side, there are a group of beginners here who only wanted to stay on flat parts monday morning.
Yesterday they skied perfectly down big dipper :)
I guess they improved........