Chasing my kind of diamonds.

I'm sure the holidays here in Norway and elsewhere in the world pretty much are about all the same values; spending the holidays with loved ones, relaxing and appreciating the "reboot" time of mind and body recognizing what is important in life and what is important spending time on.
Eyeh.., did I say body? I must admit that for me the holidays, in addition to family and friends, it's also another excuse to binge on good food, candy and all kinds of amazingeness that makes the tastebuds feel the festive season as well.
(..my best female trait: if it's there, I'll eat it..mmm..what? consequences? Is that a new album or movie or something?)

Well, after a few days in the sugar-haze we managed to break free and get our fatasses out of the couch long enough to take advantage of the few hours (yes, darkseason is only a couple or three hours) of daylight to check out the powder snow that fell on christmas eve as a gift to all of us skiers. "All I want for christmas is five feet of pow snow..." --> the only diamonds this girl needs. Bling bling.

Luckily I've got a somewhat amazing backyard aka playground for grown up kids to tumble and stumble around making happyfaces all over. This kind of fun makes me feel alive!

So me and one of my roomates (I'll introduce you to them in a later post) got our shit togehter and headed out skitouring my superlocalmountain "Galten" just behind my house. The skiing is playful, supersafe and a "go to" on avalanche risk days, and in general it's a great place both for beginners and experienced skiers. The skitouring is just an hour hiking to get to all the fun stuff. An hour of hard labour, which prolongs life with at least two hours in the other end (wherever/whenever that end is..).
It's a win-win situation!

Walking in a winter wonderland
As we pull off the road and start hiking we have this amazing winter wonderland ahead of us, bringing promises for the skiing back down. The birch and spruce are all covered in crystals of snow like in a postcard, as a result from the cold starry night before. It's all glimmering like diamonds in the sparse daylight. "Diamonds are a girls best friend" they say.. and there's only one type of diamonds classy enought for these girls. ;-)

*Welcome to my backyard! Line on her way to the top"

"Stoked about the touring up, the snow conditions and the magical light*
The skis we use for skitouring is called randonnee, and are skis fitted spesifially for skitouring and deep snow skiing. It's somewhat similar to alpine skiing, but the difference is in the gear; the shoes and bindings made for a loose heel walking uphill to be fastened for skiing downhill. Also, when skitouring we sometimes move into avalanche exposed terrain, and therefore we bring proper equipment both for protective reasons like helmet and backprotection, and most importantly we bring spesific equipment in case of an avalanche. However, the lifesaving "equpment" we bring is knowledge and skills how to avoid exposed terrain, how to judge the conditions to be safe to proceed and how to buddy rescue in case of an avalanche. Well, it's no surprise that the safest way is to just stay out of all exposed terrain overall. Galten is a supersafe place where we still have a lot of fun even though it's not very steep. A little bit of fun for everyone. :)

View towards Sortland
The view is towards the north in the fjord passage, where our "city" is situated by the shoreline. Sortland, meaning "black land" translated directly, is now called the "blue city" because of the closeness to the blue ocean, the blue hours midday during winter and this has inspired an artist to take the initiative to paint most of the official buildings in the city centrum in shades of ocean blue.

Got some nice snow from the top

From the top we had some 1.5 foot of nice smooth snow on a solid base, however a few sharks (rocks) surfaced and bit my skis. It hurts in my skiheart every time I hear that shrill sound of a rock meeting steel edges and a soft sole... my poor babies.

Welcome to my backyard and superlocal playground

This was Lines' first trip skitouring this hillside, and probably not the last time. Eventually we'll skitour more of the mountains in our region, just hoping for lots of snow throughout the winter!

end-of-skiing-evening-light

This was all the daylight we had for today, witnessing the last rays of light disapear into the horizon. Tomorrow the day will be one minute longer, as we move toward summertime and the longer days. In mid january we'll see and welcome the sun surfacing the horizon again. When living in northern Norway where the sun sets for three months before we get to see her again, we really learn to appreciate the presence and absence of light.
Absence of light? Some people call it the "darkseason", I like to call it the "colour season" because in the dark we get to see all the wonderful light and colours we don't get to see in daylight.
But that's a later post.

If you have any questions, or want a post on a specific subject just let me know and I'll get back to you.

Cheers from happyfaces!

sweaty post skitouring picture not inserted here <-- saving you from the troule of bad helmet hair, sweaty wool and provocative happy girls!