Winter came early this year, and hard. We’ve got plenty of snow and temperatures have been at –10°C or colder. For the first time since forever, we have enough snow for skiing in Stockholm in December.

I took a few hours off work this afternoon and went skiing on Järvafältet. It was perfect. A cold Monday afternoon, almost no people. Fresh snow, and tracks in good shape.

Out skiing in –10°C, I was warmer than I am at home at +17°C. There wasn’t a single moment when I was cold, even though I was wearing about as much as I do when I sit home on the sofa.

My phone was less happy in the cold. It died, showing me a distressed yellow warning triangle with a thermometer icon, before I finished my circuit. Which was a bit of a problem, because it had my photos of the map of tracks. The map was only posted in a handful of locations, and I knew there were none in the north-west corner of the area. The tracks follow the terrain and are nowhere near regular or predictable in shape. But most of the time there wasn’t much choice, just follow the tracks, so I found my way back even without the maps.