The plan for today was to ski from Kjeldebu to Rauhelleren, which should be about 25 km. Unfortunately the weather forecast promised very strong wind (gusting up to 100 km/h) together with plentiful snowfall. Planning for 8 hours of skiing in horrible conditions would be nothing short of reckless. But we also didn’t want to get snowed in at the small, chilly, unmanned hut with limited amenities.

So, plan B: we got up early to get ahead of the storm and skied just 8 km to Dyranut, the nearest manned hut, where we will wait out the storm.

We arrived at Dyranut already at 10 o’clock, after two-ish hours of skiing. It was windy already in the morning, but not exceptionally so.

Modern, accurate, high-precision weather forecasts are truly a miraculous boon to skiers. The weather gradually got worse, starting just an hour or two after our arrival. By the afternoon it was truly horrible. Had we gotten caught in this weather out in the open, it would have been life-threatening.

As it was, moving between the two buildings at Dyranut – one of which had all the common areas, including the toilets, and the other all the bedrooms – was very challenging. We avoided it as best we could, but still needed to make the trip a few times during the day and evening. It was just a 20-metre walk – but with steep banks of snow, piles of soft snow, no visibility due to the air being full of yet more snow, and gale-force winds. On my first trip there and back I think I fell over four times. For the next time, I brought a ski pole for help.

As an added bonus there was a fire alarm at one point in the building with the bedrooms, so we all had to fight our way there to check it out. It turned out to be something with the generator (running out of coolant I think). Imagining what would happen if the hut actually burned down, with all our warm clothes and equipment, in this weather, was pretty scary. And it does happen! Various STF huts have burned in 2000 at Rogen, in 2010 at Stensdalen, and in 2022 at Sälka. All those open fires are risky.

So the day was mostly quite boring but interspersed with moments of fear and tension.