Lillomarka calm

Shhhhhh! Don’t tell anyone. If you want peace, get out of Nordmarka. Went for a headlight trip last night on the other side of the valley in Lillomarka. Started from my side at Brekke and descended the unprepared but workable trail that goes over to the Maridalen dam. From there I clambered up the hill near the locked water plant gate onto the trail that starts at Oset.

Then it was quiet, smooth sailing on new prepared trails up to Movatn. Saw a few people coming the other way. Perhaps they took the train to Movatn? But passed no one going my way. The trails were mostly double-width which would give plenty of room (and skating possibilities too) even with crowds.

This route was a good combination of diagonal-going and double-poling. Perfect for training. Coming back down the steepness was just right for getting into the trackset and screaming downhill without snowploughing.

Trip details:

• Wax: blue extra
• Temp: -8C
• Style: Classic.
• Distance: 24km

Dog woman, my arch nemesis

Dog woman in civilian dress, sans hound

So, we meet again dog woman…

She’s my forest arch nemesis. Last time I crossed her–last season–I was out in sticky yet slippery new snow on which I couldn’t get any grip even though I still had to stop every 50 meters to scrape my skis.

She came up from behind me and effortlessly passed me. I saw her Lycra muffin-topped booty float ahead and away from me in phantasmagoric tranquillity. There wasn’t the slightest sign of effort to disturb her significant keister.

Dog woman, you see, is a monster. In classical Greek kind of way. Like the half man, half goat Satyrs, like the half woman and a lot of snakes Medusa, etc. etc.

She is half pup, half diet failure and gets her imposing girth towed around the Eastern side of Nordmarka by a puny but exceedingly fit dog.

And she is evil. For several reasons.

First and foremost because she taunts me. I’m getting accustomed to being the fastest animal on skis in my part of the forest. This creates expectations that sometimes disturb my enjoyment. I don’t get passed but when I come up behind other skiers I often wonder whether I am faster then them. But then I reason that if I wasn’t faster I wouldn’t be creeping up on them in the first place. And staying at my normal, sustainable training speed I always more or less quickly get by them.

So far, so good. But then dog woman comes into the picture. Last night she glided onto my trail from a side artery. Right in front of me. All the better to appreciate the weighty roll spilling over her lycra tights.

Then, hound trotting on frenetically (curiously only one-headed but surely flesh-eating), she and her bulbous hams calmly glided out of sight.

Dog woman!

She is evil because:

1. she cheats
2. she knows she annoys me
3. if her purpose wasn’t just to annoy me, she would actually ski (slowly) to burn off that butt

And, finally, she is evil because she must use dark forces and/or nasty ingredients to get insane ski glide. Probably virgin blood.

Polar bear rhapsody

The white stuff around my neck is frozen vapour from breathing (and skiing) in minus 20C conditions yesterday.  Went from Grinda to Skar and back. Hope growing white fur doesn’t mean I’m turning into a polar bear. Been warned I might be headed in that direction…

Trip details:

• Wax: green.
• Temp: -20C
• Style: Classic.
• Distance: 17km

Saturday tour with foreign colleagues

Being serious about skiing, I don’t usually get to taste the pleasures enjoyed by casual skigoers. I tend to ski as quickly as possible past the food serving lodges in the forest in order to avoid the crowds they attract.

But yesterday I took some colleagues from the German subsidiary out to try skiing in the forest. A couple of them turned out skill-wise to fit in pretty well with the Norwegian Saturday touring crowd, which was impressive since they don’t get to ski much.

We went from the shop where you can rent skis at Voksenkollen to the lodge at Ullevålseter and back. I skied up to Voksenkollen from my place in Korsvoll in order to get some training in on freshly set, untrammeled tracks.

While following our route we indulged in the fine tradition of stopping at every lodge to have coffee, chocolate and pastries to replace every calorie we burned off.

The picture is from the Ullevålseter lodge that has a nice ambiance though slightly cold waffles.

My route was Grinda-Voksenkollen-Ullevåleseter-Frognerseteren-Voksenkollen-Ullevåleseter-Grinda.

Trip details:

• Wax: blue.
• Style: Classic.
• Distance: 34km

Trysil – good skiing, bad signs

Went on a trip with colleagues to Trysil last week. Most of them just went downhill skiing, but the area does have a decent network of well-groomed trails.

The weather wasn’t with me, however. The one day I got up into the higher mountain area pictured above I couldn’t see much past the end of my nose. That complicated the already daunting task of finding your way around the Trysil area. The ski resort provides a detailed looking map but it’s more decoration than function. The places on the map don’t correspond to the names on the wooden signs here and there and those signs are almost always missing at any critical intersection where you need to choose your direction. At worst you just end up turning around and around in a cabin area, never finding the trail described in glowing details on the back of the map.

This is the second year I’ve been on this trip and I’ve now figured out some of the traps. Still I’m still amazed by their devilish complexity. But past the early pitfalls lie others. And I was, for the second year, screaming obscenities into the wind.

Still, that aside, the skiing was fun. I managed 13 Norwegian “miles” or 130km in 3 days. The second and third day I couldn’t go into the high mountain area pictured above because there was a lot of new snow and the trails there weren’t being prepped there.

Staying closer to the cabin I enjoyed terrain that resembled Sjusjøen, though with basically one big sloping sided mountain instead of several. There were some fun, fast downhill stretches that were good practice for my current focus which is staying in the trackset and not snowploughing. Cold going, though, when your body is no longer furnishing an effort and you’re going fast dressed in light clothes!

Trip details:

• Wax: blue or blue extra depending on the temp.
• Air temp: between -5 and -10C
• Style: Classic and Skate
• Distance: 130 km over 3 days

Grinda to Øyungen

Redid my trip up the Maridal valley with a further extension up to Øyungen. Was just as fun as before until I passed Skar. Skar seems to be another preferred start spot for the unimaginative sort who prefer to drive in a long way beyond where they could have put on their skis to enjoy near-perfect conditions. In all fairness some of those who start there take the bus, thus setting themselves apart from the monkey crowd.

But however they arrived, they sure abused the track. The last 500 meters was nearly scraped bare by Danish style obsessive snowploughing and every slight uphill was hacked up by unnecessary herringboning where diagonal stride would have worked fine.

Still, when I arrived at the top at Øyungen and turned back around, the ride back down was fun. I got into a tuck and just blasted down the hill. When I got near the bottom I was able to burn up my ludicrous speed by gliding up onto the loose snow pushed to the side by the madly ploughing masses. I thus avoided the bare scraped rocks.

• Wax: blue extra
• Air temp: -2,3
• Style: Classic
• Distance: 21,5 km

Valley farms from Grinda to Skar

Took a 17km early evening round trip up Maridal valley on whose right flank I live. Rolling terrain through picturesque farm and forest land. The higher reaches give you nice vistas down onto Maridalsvannet, over to Grefsenkollen and occasionally down to the city.

Even though it starts on the border of town, this trail sees little use. Most people either go to Sognsvann or drive to the endpoint at Skar and ski onward on much less pleasant trails. It’s small ups and downs the whole way making for good training. Moreover, it’s the best place to spot “meese”. This is the trail where I had my belligerent Moose run-in last winter.

Because of the farms, houses and road lights some of the people I passed were going without a headlight.

Trip details

• Wax: blue extra
• Air temp: -3.0
• Style: Classic
• Distance: 17 km

Snow courtesy

Had the amazing experience of seeing some idiot jogging on the most crowded ski trail in the Oslo forest yesterday. Not the first time I’ve been floored by stupid behaviour on ski trails in this country. Norway has some very good laws guaranteeing access to all property, private or public, for unhindered recreational use. The only downside to them that they make it impossible to bar anyone from stomping up your ski trail or letting their dog shit all over it if that’s what they’re intent on doing.

As someone famously remarked about an anti-vagrancy ordiance, “the law is an idiot that bars both rich and poor from sleeping out of doors.”

So, if the law won’t help us here, lets try a bit of common courtesy:

• Share the trail and be courteous.
• Yield to downhill and faster traffic.  Prepare for blind corners.
• Avoid snow-shoeing or walking on ski trails.  This ruins the track for other skiers.
• Skating over prepared tracks ruins the skiing for others.
  
• When stopped, move off the trail.
• Learn and follow local regulations regarding dogs.  Some routes are more suitable for dog sledding and skijoring than others. Consider leaving your dog at home.  Dogs ruin the ski track, present hazards to down slope skiers and their waste can ruin somebody else’s winter outing. Plus, your dog may not be used to or capable of winter country travel. Practice principles of canine courtesy in snow country.

Sources: http://www.fs.fed.us/r6/willamette/recreation/tripplanning-winter/share-snow.html and http://www.thetrustees.org/places-to-visit/pioneer-valley/notchview.html

Fun Frognerseteren

Today was a longer trip. Started from Grinda, went up the valley to Ullevålseter, continued from there to Frognerseteren, doubled back, came down the West side of Sognsvann, went up the East side lysløype, crossed the ice at Nedre Blansjø, took the trail to Langmyr and then finally walked the 200m along the road back to Grinda. Works out to almost exactly 20km. That’s my normal weekday max. Happily this route was never crowded aside from the very short E. side Sognsvann part, and it mostly followed trails that had been prepped today.

I went with colleagues, which was good for moderating my uphill speed and pushing me to go faster downhill. Today I discovered that in addition to weighting the outside leg while going through a turn at high speed in the trackset, you should also lean. Sounds obvious but it hadn’t occurred to me before. Really helped me stay in the trackset in the places where I tended to fly out before on fast descents.

Trip details:

• Wax: blue.
• Air temp: -8.8
• Style: Classic.
• Distance: 20 km

The back forty

Sognsvann lysløype. Image source: Nina Didriksen/Skiforeningen

Have been skiing in my back yard every day since getting back from the tropical part of Canada. My evenings have been densely packed with a ski-eat-sleep routine. This has occupied my every waking moment so I’ve had no chance to write about it.

That said, I haven’t been going any great distances, skiing a couple variants of a little loop:

10.01.2010	11.01.2010	12.01.2010	13.01.2010
Langmyr-Grinda	Grinda-Langmyr	Grinda-Langmyr	Grinda-Ullevålseter-Langmyr
8,63	8,63	8,63	12,71

Jet lag has been tiring me out, so a forty minute (13km/h) dash was enough the first three days.

Last night my route took me back down from Ullevålseter by way of the Eastside Sognsvann lysløype (pictured above).  I’ve never seen such a mass of Norwegian humanity. It was like being in a bad seeding in the Birkebeiner ski race. I love my headlight that helps me avoid all that mess. I think the forest is never prettier than under my own light. And the absence of unimaginative plodding hoards on the unlighted trails helps the aesthetics too.

We’ve been experiencing a strong inversion layer so temperatures have stayed around -5C where I am at 200m while they been in the minus teens in the city below. Maybe the crowds are coming to Sognsvann to get warmed up.

Trip details:

• Wax: blue extra.
• Style: Classic.

10.01.2010	11.01.2010	12.01.2010	13.01.2010
Back40	Back40	Back40	GrinLangmyr
1,61	2,58	2,58	2,58
2,32	1,62	1,62	1,62
0,5	0,5	0,5	3,01
1,62	2,32	2,32	4
2,58	1,61	1,61	1,5
8,63	8,63	8,63	12,71