Ski Touring Narvik Day 2
Hunddalshytta to Lossiestua
First ‘serious’ day.
Up early and away to escape the insanity of the full hut. It was another blue sky day, but at 8:30am it was -18 degrees centigrade. Welcome to the arctic circle.
There was a cold headwind to being with which froze my trusty sigg waterbottle solid. Luckily, Helen had some water so it was all good.
We knew that there would be another group following out skin track later in the day. We drew a few pictures in the snow for them. My favourite was the classic immature sketch of male genitalia that I drew.
Thankfully there were a few descents, the first one had an amazing backdrop and was more of a cruise than anything else. I enjoyed finally getting my skins off and the feeling of turning with fat powder skis.
Next, we climbed up to a col. Due to the fatness of the skis it means that the skins are also relatively wide. This means you are able to skin straight up fairly steep slopes. This saves you a lot of time, but with a heavy bag buts a lot of strain on the central system. I was ‘poked’ (as my kiwi friend would say) as I reached the summit. Soaking wet. Time to change my thermal.
Lunch break; Had polarbrøds smeared with children.
Next, I taught Helen how to rip your skins off without taking your skis off. Something which saves an age at transitions.
We skied down the longest descent of the trip making nice lines in the sun baked snow. Heres a shot of Helen in action.
I managed another cheeky sun baked descent to wee loch later in the day. It was cheeky in that I had to do a 15min skin out as a result when Helen just traversed and beat me by ages. I like descending tho; the feeling of slashing the slope was well worth the tiring skin out.
We arrived at Lossiestua before any of the other groups. Beating the large group by 2.25 hours. Total for the day: 6.25 hours.
The wind is getting up as I write this into my little black book. Buffeting the hut; reminding me of the harsh reality of where we are. I feel lucky that the weather has been so good, so far.
