We took the same route today as we usually do. Spring is here in the lower parts of Oslo, but there is still lots of snow in the forest. There will be skiing conditions for several weeks more I guess, but maybe one has to start further and further up, and maybe one will need to frequently take on and off skis to pass patches without snow. Anyhow, we'll probably enjoy life on the sea instead of going skiing in the upcoming weekends.
This lake is called "Badedammen", it was artificially made to "compensate" the locals when the lake above, Steinbruvann, was made into drinking water reservoir. Today Steinbruvann has again become a bathing lake.
Is the ice safe? I think it probably is, but best not to take any chances. QUICK, GET UP FROM THERE BEFORE YOUR MOTHER SEE THIS!
Quite much water in the streams and rivers. Quite much water dripping and running "everywhere". Spring is here, too, just in another shape than by the coastline.
My family is dressed pretty well. I was going in just a t-shirt, and I didn't even care to bring spare clothes with me. It was fine - though, quite big local temperature differences. Like, in this very uphill it was suddenly like the air was some 4-5C warmer than hundred metres earlier. And it was not due to my internal heat increasing while climbing the hill.
At some places the skiing track was very wet. In some few days it will be a patch without snow here. Some places like this the water is colored (other places it's clear), my children was commenting that probably someone had been peeing there. What causes the coloring?
This was the main road between Oslo and Bergen for some time (1724-1873 if I remember right). This viaduct is massive, even though it maybe doesn't look so impressive on the photos.
(not in chronological order, the photo below was taken on the return trip)
We turned around at the crossroad to Skytta. I've been here many times, but I've never realized how much civilization there is around just here. It's the borderland between "marka" and the civilization. We're just outside the Oslo municipality border.
Not much visible on the picture, but we found this signpost where it said "MÅL" (meaning goal, target, finish ... in this context, "finish line"), so we decided that was the end of our trip; time to turn around and go home.
I hate it when they start like this. The youngest decides to walk on the top of the skis of the middle one, despite I've said over and over again that she should not do that. The middle one resolutely pushes the smaller one, despite I've told him over and over again that it's not the right way to handle such conflicts.
... anyhow, it was the water I was going to photograph ....
All photos available on IPFS Qmd2b1qxPjFmumvYJkVenno4hSQNEp8HAMkSPocsgq3RZt. License: CC BY-SA 4.0
Whoa! I can hear the water dripping, bubbling and burbling under the snow, all over the place. And of course it's THE LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN. The Sun must go all the way around the horizon and dip below and come out again -- what a finite planet this is! Where ever we go -- there we are. Every direction is south when you stand at the North Pole!
But hey! You don't answer the question, what colors the snow in that one place? For sure it's the tannins from the vegetation like in the bark from the trees. Probably there's an underground stream (or slough) that passes through there. And the water carries the tannins that have leached from the vegetation. And that's also why we call it "tanning" leather.
In the tropics and sub tropics you often see black rivers and lakes. The Suwanee River in North Florida or Río Negro in the Amazon Basin are good examples. When you go in the water and scoop up a handful it's the color of tea. Tannins.
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Not here in Oslo, the sun dips below the horizon even at the mid summer night (and the sun is above the horizon at mid-day even at the winter solstice) - but around the mid summer night it does not get dark. St.Petersburg is at the same latitude, they have their "white nights", essentially the same in Oslo except it's not marketed as "the white nights".
I often travelled by airplane from my home town to Oslo when I was younger, and it was always spectacular and often even surprising for me that it would get dark in the evenings in the summer time. Once we were a handful of scouts going to some national scout competition in the southern Norway. Of course we lost big time. Even as we arrived there late Friday night and was trying to put up the tents ... it was totally dark and nobody had thought to bring a flash-light! (also, the local scouts got lots of support from their parents, some of them even running around with lots of books and answering questions from their children)
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I get it, you are outside of the Arctic Circle but not too far away. You must get spectacular Auroras too. I've only seen it a few times like colorful, green waves in the sky. That's really funny, the scouts forgot to bring flashlights! Be prepared! Nowadays headlamps are the rage -- the best thing to have after a hurricane are headlamps with batteries, and free hands.
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At my current latitude Aururas are rather seldom, and since we're living in Oslo and also spending quite much of our lives indoors, it's very rare that we see it here. It's only once I'm really sure to have seen it at this latitude; we were driving towards St.Petersburg, we were somewhere in the southern Finland, and saw something resembling auroras. We stopped the car, turned off the headlights and went out looking - yes, it was aurora indeed.
According to the local tourism marketing people, Tromsø is the place to watch the polar light. Of course, it's just a half-truth. There was polar-light-tour-operators that were relying on the best aurora forecast, weather forecasts and possibly some ground observers too, when the time was ripe, they would summon everyone that had signed up for a polar light tour into mini-buses and drive up to two hours to the best observation spot. In Tromsø itself it's quite often overcast, but due to the mountains, there would almost always be somewhere within the radius of two hours drive where it was no clouds.
Tromsø itself is rather bad for polar light gazing, as it's frequently overcast, it's quite much light pollution and one would typically spend the time indoors rather than outdoors. I was living a bit away from the central parts of Tromsø, so there was not so much artificial light at our place, except what I could easily turn off myself. We didn't have a WC, so we frequently had to go out, of course looking for polar light while doing so. We were frequently hosting tourists, I didn't do any proper statistics on it, but I estimated that the probability was like 50% for seeing polar lights if staying for a week at our place during the right season. Then they built like 500 new apartments on the surrounding plot of land and all the charm was gone ... and we moved to Oslo anyway.
Once I was climbing up a mountain by skis, it was pitch dark, no moon to light up the landscape - and I was quite worried for how to get down the hill at the other side in such a darkness. Just before the hills came the aurora turned up - not the usual kind of aurora, but a very big, intense and powerful aurora. It was like someone had turned on the light switch, and I could very easily ski down the hill at great speed.
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That's a great story. You had placed yourself in some danger, due to that strange thrill seeking and wanderlust that possesses so many of us, but The Hand of Grace saved you from your indiscretion and made a thrilling event out of it. Sporting with The Lord. That's how I look at it nowadays.
I'm glad to know that witnessing an aurora is a special thing even for Norwegians and those who have lived outside of the ghettos of civilization. I'll never forget my first aurora late on a November night probably in 1966. We were irreverent teenagers excited to have "a case of beer" and access to a "safe house" to consume it in. We probably went outside to relieve ourselves but the sky turned into fire with waves of green, red, blue and yellow -- a celestial storm that we knew nothing about. Of course it was on the news and in the newspapers afterwards and we were fortunate witnesses. In our deep ignorance at least someone among us knew enough to call it the Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis.
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almost every year when I am on a cycling inwards towards Sørkedalen is always someone skiing on the last snow like 500meter of snow lol. then gravel then walking then skiing.
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hahahhaa :)
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I just have no want to do it, but im sure its fun! can still go skiing down the slope here as its now 20cm of compact ice, and near on impossible to walk up, or down! the colour could be tanning from the trees, sometimes its from salt but there wouldnt have been salt there.. OR its a place where a herd of deer chose to pee on before the snow covered it!
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It's most likely from old grass, peat or similar. It's definitively not pee, even if that's the obvious answer for the kids :-)
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That snow looks wet. I bet its the last trip of the year too :-) Amazing though to get into the forest and experience spring there close up. Norwegian kids are lucky and there is no better education I think.
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It's melting fast now.
And the sea ice ... Saturday morning I went to Sandvika, it was no ice there (except for some small pieces), but lots of ice around ... i.e., around Borøya. Monday I went from Sandvika to Bestumkilen and back again, it was no ice (except for some small pieces) around Borøya, on my way into Lille Ostsund I had to plow through some ice (but very soft ice). Maybe two hours later I went the other way and ... there was only fragments of ice there.
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Spring is always like an explosion. You wait like forever for it to happen, and then when it comes, its incredible how fast the landscape change. I do miss being close to nature and the Oslo fjord is amazing. You are lucky who get to enjoy it.
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Great picture. Really would like to do this with our kids! Maybe we should indeed go skiing next year!
You know what they say: don’t eat yellow snow! So your kids could have been right 😂
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Sir @tobixen skiing is really enjoyable and i think you enjoy it. But we never get chance for any skiing in our country only see the skiing in tv or hollywood movies.
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oow @tobixen skiing is very fun,
Is that your daughter?
Looks like he really enjoys skiing
But I live in Indonesia which is no winter, so I never feel the cold of snow.
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No, that's my son, the smaller one is my daughter. We also have the 14yo son that didn't join the trip.
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Ooooee yaya good day happy
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Spring is coming! Hehe. Looks like a great day of cross country skiing. :) Is this trail near your place?
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Yes, that's probably the closest place for skiing, but half an hour of walk, so we usually end up taking the car anyway.
I'm sometimes use public transport to get to the skiing tracks, that gets a bit more interesting as one doesn't have to start and end the skiing trip at the same place.
edit: since it's uphill to the skiing track, on the best of the winter days we can ski along some pedestrian roads half the way to home and then walk the rest - though they frequently spread rocks there on the ice to prevent pedestrian from falling, that's quite incompatible with skiing.
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That's so cool to have a track so close to your place. Definitely makes it easier to get to and thus makes it more likely you are to go :) And a great way to get the kids out of the house and exercising, hehe. Hope the snow sticks around a little longer!
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Oh, I think it's pretty bad the skiing tracks are so far away :-)
When I was living with my mother in my home town of Tromsø, it was just like 200 metres of walk. When I was living at my own place in Tromsø, I could take them on right outside my entrance door and go down all the way down to the sea (then they destroyed everything, building 500 more apartments on the neighbouring land, with lots of access roads everywhere - and we moved to Oslo).
My wife was searching for a place to live, there was one house showing up, it was the perfect house for us, and it was also right by the forest border - but unfortunately there were someone else overbidding us.
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The closer the better. It's surprising how we aren't usually willing to travel further than a certain amount to do, well, pretty much anything. Like living with an amazing ski track 30 minutes away, but your limit is going 20 minutes, so you never go...
Living 200 meters from a cool trail must have been awesome! I used to live next to a nature preserve so I always had trails to walk and ski. It's sad how development is usually seen as more important than nature... :\ Like money is more important than life or something...
I'm sure you'll eventually find the perfect place to live :) Or figure out how to make the best of wherever you happen to end up :)
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No, that wasn't a cool trail, but it was a useful trail.
Tromsø is an island, on that island we have the city, we have shopping centers, residental areas, an airport, the university, the hospital, harbors, research institutes, sport stadiums, swimming pools, museums, we had a brewery (they have moved out now to where land is cheap) and ... an ever-shrinking amount of forest. That trail starts nearby my mothers home, relatively far south on the island, and it goes all the way to the north tip of the island, so it can be used for ... skiing to the University, for instance. Except, as they built more and more and more and even more parking places in the University area, the distance one needed to carry the skis when arriving has only been growing and growing.
The island is surrounded by mountains. For the interesting trips, we needed to get away from the island and get up to the mountains.
Eventually I bought a sail boat. It was kind of cool, but still ... in the Tromsø area there are car roads everywhere along the coastline and very few islands not connected by bridges or ferries. It was needed to go quite far to get to some interesting place without car traffic.
One of the things I really love with Oslo is the closeness to nature. Going with a boat, there are lots of interesting places, and one doesn't need to go far to find them ... the feeling of idyllic nature can be found less than two nautical mile from the central train station, and one can get into the "deep" forests just by public transport and a short walk/skiing trip. The borders are also quite sacred, it's not so that we risk to lose yet more of the common land for every local election.
I got a bit fed up with my hometown (too much car traffic, it's easy to get dependent on the car, too difficult to enjoy nature even if we had plenty of it) and I've become quite settled down in Oslo now ... but I do miss the mountains and midnight sun!
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Wow...that sounds like an amazing place to live. I feel lucky living in Los Angeles because I can get to some smaller mountains and lots of canyon hiking trails in a 30 minute drive. The ocean is just over an hour away, and there are lots of parks. Many people think Los Angeles is just a giant city, but there are so many different biomes so close by.
An island surrounded by mountains...wow...closest to that was when I lived in Kyoto, Japan. Surrounded by mountains in a basin...but an island like that sounds cooler. One of these days when I get my blog mobile again I'll definitely have to visit. Need to get out of the U.S. for a while anyways, hehe.
It is so interesting to hear about the culture of commuting in other countries, especially ones that seem a bit more focused on nature and people vs commerce. It's unfortunate that money will always slowly push nature out of the way, though. I think we've become too dependent on cars as well. But, at least here in the U.S. not much is set up in terms of solid public transportation, or proper bike paths, or incentive to at least carpool... It can be very frustrating at time. And traveling around by sailboat? Now that's something to envy, hehe.
Hope you have an awesome day! :)
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It is for sure nice views, and I miss that. I easily get confused with the directions even here in Oslo, but in my home town it's usually quite trivial, just to have a look at the mountains. And to be fair, the mountains are easily accessible with a car, we do have bridges and even tunnels ... though, during the last two decades we've started getting ever-increasing problems with traffic jams.
I feel that the nature is closer here in Oslo, it requires less planning to enjoy it, and we get time for doing it more often than what we would have had back in Tromsø.
That's quite abnormal even in Norway, but it was a period of my life that I would either start my job journey by skiing to my colleague and then "carpooling" with him, or I would go by the sail boat, often starting the job journey late in the evening the day before, anchor up outside my boss and sleep there :-) We had a quite relaxed "office" situation in those days, we would meet up in the basement at my boss' home three times a week if we all were in Tromsø, otherwise work from home.
I have one positive thing to say about commuting in my former home town (except the facts that I indeed was able to go skiing or sailing to the office), on days with extreme amounts of snow, the cleaning trucks would prioritize to keep the bus service going around, and people would be encouraged to take the bus rather than drive. Two years ago I experienced the exact opposite here in Oslo - all buses was just cancelled for that day - even for the whole day despite the snowfall stopped in the early morning and the snow cleaning services had everything under control towards the evening.
We have relatively many bike roads and bike lanes here in Oslo, and Norway generally, but it's my general impression that the architects have never tried biking on such roads. Quite often it's very hard to find the way also - they may have set up some signs, but not enough of them. Sometimes the bike road does some really strange detours to get past the road systems in big junctions, that's bad enough by itself, but it's even worse when there are no signs explaining the bikers how to get around. I have the feeling that bikers and pedestrians are "second class citizens" in the traffic system ... for instance, if there are roadworks, they could dig a big hole in the bike road without considering that fast bikes may need some heads-up. If they do some roadworks in the car road, they can typically block the whole bike lane with a big fat sign warning the cars about the road work, etc. Quite often I end up biking in the car road even if there are bike roads for different reasons - often because I don't know how to enter or exit the bike road, like, I'm biking at the car road and there are no bike road - then all of a sudden there is a bike road going parallel with the car road, but separated i.e. by a line of trees, I can't just switch there. Bike lane along the main road meeting a minor side road, bikes will have to yield for all the traffic on the side road and the bike road is often constructed with weird detours at every side road. Bike along the car road and one has the right-of-way. Snow plows cleaning the car road for snow, depositing it on the bike road, etc.
I don't bike that frequently, one reason is that the transport fares on the public transport is very much geared towards frequent commuters. If there are technical problems with the bike or if I consider the weather to be too sour for biking, then I can't buy many single-tickets on the public transport before it's more profitable to buy a one month pass - so I often end up buying a one-month-pass and hence ruining the biking season. Actually, I've even gone further now, I'm using one-year-passes instead. For many people (including me) biking can be the fastest way to get from door to door as one isn't much affected by the traffic jams, can sneak on red lights sometimes, don't have to walk to the nearest bus stop or metro stop, don't have to stop at every bus stop or metro stop, easily can route around problems (unlike the trams), etc. Now I'm sometimes travelling with a folding electric bike, I can keep decent speed in the uphills, and I can jump on a train or a metro without paying for the bike.
Only on very rare occasions would I drive to work. According to google maps it's actually faster than the public transport even if the traffic is slow ... but add the time to clean the car for snow and ice before leaving home, and searching for a parking after arrival, and it's probably not faster anyway. (My employer has some few free parking places for employees, but one would either have to apply for a reserved place with a very good reason or get very early to work to enjoy one of the few free-for-all parkings there are). It's also quite expensive due to excessive road tolls. And also, it's impossible to read emails while driving a car.
While I don't have any statistics, I believe it's a minority of people in Oslo that drives daily to work.
Cars are for sure addictive. I wrote up another post on that :-)
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I seem to have seen the atmosphere of a place like this, but inside the movie ..
you have a beautiful environment with white and very cold snow ...
in my place just summer and rain ..
I really want to enjoy the snow, but it seems impossible for me.
see you as a family "seems very fun for ski
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Not so cold actually. I was wearing a t-shirt this day, not even bothering to take extra clothes with me.
On the best days in spring, it's possible to walk around with shorts and t-shirt. This would have been such a day if we would have managed to get out of the house in reasonable time. It was around 15:00 before we managed to get to the skiing track!
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An experience of these is the one that I need to my, excellent.
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Looks like it was a great fay out over all and getting in a last ski for the season.
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a very great post ... I really like your picture, you are great ... thanks for sharing ... you are very extraordinary @tobixen
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