Another beautiful but cold day, and we made another outing to the top.

Skiing from here to there involves one really steep red run. It’s so steep and icy that when I reached it last time I was uncertain whether I would be able to ski it at all. I was very sure that Adrian wouldn’t be able to do it. Instead we took the free ski bus to the cable car station, queued for a while and took the cable car straight to the top. Very convenient.

At the top (which is not technically the top of the mountain but I’m going to call it the top anyway) everything is encrusted with snow. The cable car station doorway, all the buildings, the signposts, the cables. It looks almost surreal.

From the top it’s mostly nice, gentle, long ski routes down. Pure pleasure and sightseeing!

A day or two before our trip, I checked the weather report for Åre and packed accordingly. The weather forecast was way off target, both fortunately and unfortunately. The forecast promised temperatures just around freezing, and clouds all the time. Instead we have temperatures well below &ndash,10°C, and much more blue skies and sunshine than I had hoped.

Yesterday the cold didn’t bother me. Today by midmorning I was so cold I had to go back inside and double up on all my layers. Double polar fleeces, double leggings, double wool socks. Double layers on my hands I already had – I wear merino wool liner gloves inside my mittens so that I can take off the mittens (for taking photos, for example) and not immediately feel like my fingers will fall off in the cold.

In the afternoon we stopped at a piste-side café for a hot drink. Does the water in the vases look cloudy? That’s because it’s frozen. The tulip stems are encased in lumps of ice. But we’re out of the wind, and the hot drink is hot, so that’s all right.

Adrian meanwhile wasn’t bothered by the cold at all. He’s like a walking nuclear reactor.

He’s still bravely practicing the snowboard. I was a bit skeptical and thought that he would probably give up after a few days. But he keeps at it, not just during the lessons, and he’s learning fast. He is already connecting his turns and getting some flow going.

A cold morning (–14°C); slightly less cold during the day.

The Björnen area suits us very well, with its variety of blue runs. Even when we’ve ventured further away during the day, late in the afternoon while Adrian has his snowboard lesson (and Eric goes home for the day) Ingrid and I just go up and down the Järven lift and its blue runs. They’re very pleasant: wide, curved, wooded, not so steep that they get icy. And with beautiful views!

The Järven lift is close to a lot of housing, so its queue fills up in the afternoon with people heading “home”. But because they are heading home, the runs down from this lift can be nearly empty. I’ve skied down here several times without seeing a single other person.

Most lifts here open a “singles queue” to one side when the main queue grows long, to make sure that any free seats get filled and the lift runs at maximum capacity. These queues always move much faster than the main ones. Especially with the larger chairlifts we’ve now learned to always head straight for the singles queue, even when it looks longer than the main queue.

After two gray days it was bright and sunny today and very little wind, so I wanted to head up to the higher slopes. See some views, maybe take some photos.

Getting from Björnen (at the far right end of the piste map) to the pistes near the peak of Åreskutan (at the far left of the piste map) and then back again took me and Ingrid effectively all day. We were not the only skiers heading in that direction and the lift queues ate up a lot of time.

We did get some wonderful views up there. And the slopes were quite to my taste. The map marks them as ski routes rather than pistes – they’re relatively long, narrow and gentle. They’re great for just gliding along and taking in the views.

The slopes were not crowded but the restaurants on that side of the resort were all completely packed. At one place the waiting time for a table was over an hour. So I didn’t enjoy all the fabulous views as much as I might have because towards the end I was just so hungry.

Meanwhile Adrian and Eric stayed in Björnen all day. Adrian has decided to learn snowboarding and is taking lessons, but it means he’s effectively a total beginner on the slopes again and can only manage the gentlest inclines at the slowest pace.

I’d like to see those views from the plateau again, and show them to Eric and Adrian as well. I’m thinking of going back up there another day, maybe on a day with less beautiful weather and therefore fewer people. And with an earlier start and a more efficient plan.

The weather was much less windy today, and we were all much less tired, so we enjoyed our skiing a lot more. We explored new lifts and pistes, but generally still stayed in the Björnen side of Åre. The upper areas were still closed due to high winds for a big part of the day, so we couldn’t ski to blue pistes on the other side of the mountain. There are shuttle buses but it didn’t seem worth the effort when the blue pistes on this side were so nice. Especially late in the afternoon when the sun came out, and the lifts and pistes emptied.

We arrived in Åre at 7 in the morning. After a breakfast at the train station, our first priority was changing clothes. We travelled in clothes suitable for Stockholm where the temperature was an unseasonally warm +5°C. Here in Åre we were met by winter, closer to what Swedish winter is supposed to be: the temperature is below freezing, it is snowing, and the wind has a real bite.

Shuttle buses took us to the Björnen area where we picked up our equipment and left our luggage. Then we were ready for the slopes.

The wind remained strong and unpleasant most of the day and the skies were gray and heavy. The lifts to the upper slopes were closed and we probably wouldn’t have wanted to be up there anyway. So we stayed in the lower slopes around Björnen.

By lunchtime the kids were already tired. The skiing was nicer in the afternoon and we got some beautiful moments of sunshine. But after last night’s short sleep we felt quite done by around 15.

Our last day here, and the last few hours of skiing our favourite runs one more time, before we head back home.

Weekends are the best because the slopes are so empty. And the first few hours of the day are the best because the snow is in better shape.

Kläppen in general has been quite uncrowded, actually – there’s noticeably fewer people on the slopes than in Idre for example. But there are also fewer runs to choose between, so I’m not sure which to prefer.

See that little pink-clad figure going down that large hump in the middle? That’s Ingrid. And this is the main snow park in Kläppen, apparently the best in Sweden. I feel no desire whatsoever to go skiing there myself, but it is quite nice to float past it in a ski lift and watch the pros do their flips and twists and tricks. Plus there’s music.

The snow park is Adrian’s favourite part of the slopes here.

Ingrid and Adrian both attend ski school again, and they are advancing by leaps and bounds. Ingrid is doing parallel turns now, and her group goes down red runs and even some black ones. Adrian has gone from snow ploughing straight down to making proper turns, and just generally skis a lot better. More control, better balance, more confidence.

Eric snowboards, and is struggling with the equipment this year, so he has been staying on the green runs and even took some days off to rest in between.

I started out on greens as well but Kläppen doesn’t have many so I got bored and had to branch out and explore the blue runs. By now, after some practice, I actually like them better than the greens. It’s taken several days for me to rediscover my skiing skills and to remember the helpful tricks. For example: I am a better skier with my goggles on, because I ski faster when I am wearing them. (Either I subconsciously judge speed based on how the air hits my face, or I subconsciously feel safer at higher speeds with the goggles to protect me.) Also: I ski better when I consciously get into an even rhythm for the turns, by counting or simply going “turn, turn, turn, turn” in my head.

Too bad it will be a year before we go skiing again, and by that time my muscle memory will be all gone again.

Our cottage here is small but quite lovely. There is a sofa large enough to comfortably fit all of us, and a wide window with afternoon sun.

Ingrid and Adrian love the TV. (We don’t have one at home.) They found Nickelodeon and haven’t switched away from it yet. Nickelodeon is showing the exact same shows as last year, and even the year before – The Thundermans and Henry Danger. I even recognize individual episodes from last year’s stay at Idre.