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.

This year being the 50th anniversary of the Norwegian heavy water sabotage operations, and the majority of my skiing companions being of military background, the year’s ski tour goes across the Hardangervidda to Rjukan. I’m interested enough in the backstory to be looking forward to the talk we’ve been promised for the night at Rjukan, but mostly I’m just here for the great skiing, the stunning views, and the good company.

Day 1 – Finse to Kjeldebu. This photo above shows the Finse hut.

The guide said today would be 19 km but that later turned out to be measured as the crow flies, not as the human skis, so the real distance was 29 km. Which is a tough distance to do on the first day when we’re all still somewhat uncertain on our skis and finding our footing.

With a full pack, somewhere around 20 km my body usually starts sending me signals that “maybe now would be a good time to call it a day” and “this is kind of enough, isn’t it”. I start feeling my knees and maybe my hips, and noticing various muscles that I otherwise don’t think about. So when I started getting that feeling when we we still had a good 9 km to go, I got a bit concerned. Am I so out of shape? Nope, our estimates were just so far off.

The weather forecast for Finse today was horrible, when I checked even as late as yesterday evening. We were promised –10°C and strong winds. Instead we got a day of brilliant sunshine, just a few degrees below freezing, and almost no wind. Absolutely perfect skiing weather, and beautiful views.


Gentle descents through soft snow are lovely. In the gentlest slopes you want to follow the tracks of the skier in front of you, to get the best glide – the soft snow acts as a brake. If the slope is slightly steeper but not steep enough to require turns, everyone tends to make their own tracks in order to have the most control. And then towards the bottom we all converge again, and take off in a row like a bunch of ducklings.

This is us arriving at the unmanned Kjeldebu hut, buried in snow. As with many alpine huts, there is also no source of fresh water, apart from melting snow. A bucket packed full of snow melts down to maybe a quarter-bucket’s worth of water at best, so there were a lot of trips out to fetch more snow.

On my way to a ski tour in Norway this year again.

Last year I missed my connecting train even though I was supposed to have an hour between the arrival of one train and the departure of the next one. That was not fun at all, so this time I left myself three hours in Oslo Sentralstasjon. Which is, honestly, not that much fun either, but at least it’s less stressful.

Last year I also discovered the upmarket end of the station. Previously I only knew about the main station concourse on the upper level, and the food options there were sorely disappointing, especially given Norwegian prices. But then I learned that if I go down and to the right and down again, I can at least get a nice Neapolitan style pizza, or expensive conveyor belt sushi. Norwegian restaurant prices are eye-watering when seen with Swedish eyes, but I tell myself that I’m on vacation, and I do have to eat, and I’d rather pay for an expensive, good meal than an almost as expensive but crappy one.

No snacks, though. When a small 250 ml bottle of juice costs 50 NOK (that’s about 4.5 EUR) and a croissant is 42 NOK, I’ll make do with my bottled water from home.

Packing for my ski trip and making difficult choices about what to take and what to leave.

At 500 grams, the big camera is staying at home. I’m hoping to get the pack down to 10 kg, and that means I can’t spend 5% of my budget on a camera.

During yesterday’s walk I realized that there is enough snow in Stockholm for me to actually do a bit of skiing. I dug out my skis from the basement (and spent half an hour looking for my ski boots, because I was so sure they were in a black box but it was, in fact, brown) and drove to Järvafältet to wake up my skiing muscles.

Last year I had covid just before my ski tour, and it really affected my performance. This time I’ve been hesitating whether I should go at all, because I was even sicker this year. But I’ve had more time to recover, and yesterday’s hike proved that I’m back in decent shape, so I won’t have to cancel last minute. Which would have been a real pity, because I’ve been looking forward to this trip since November. Or since last year’s trip, more like.

Prepared tracks on perfectly flat ground are not very interesting or inspiring. But the snow was good, and the views were pretty nice. And it felt good to have a training day to re-discover my skiing technique before having to do it for real. Since I usually only get one chance a year, it takes a little while each time.

I am starting to feel more or less normal again but my energy levels are still not what they used to be. I have my annual week-long ski tour coming up in a few days and I am still not sure if I can do it. Did a diagnostic 18-kilometre walk around Lovön to figure out what state my body is actually in. Pretty decent, it turned out.

I followed the “Lovön runt” trail most of the way. Well-marked, but somehow I still managed to lose track of it several times in the beginning. I think I got misled by animal tracks and missed the human path with no footprints in the snow. And then I had to follow deer tracks to find my way back to the marked trail. Deer tracks are quite walkable, actually, but not particularly straight.


This walk – unlike several other recent ones – did not end with a golf course, but with a royal park, which actually doesn’t look all that different from a golf course when they’re both covered with snow.

I’m done with the Sweatrrr body and more than halfway with the left sleeve.

The pattern has a dark red rolled hem at the bottom of the body. But the edge doesn’t know it’s only supposed to roll the red bit, and rolls quite a lot more. I don’t like this look at all. Not sure what I can do about it, though.

If Nysse happens to be near the door when we go out, he tends to follow us. He may stop for a moment to inspect something, but quickly catches up again. Until he tires of the whole thing and wants to go home. Which is fine… except we’re actually out for an errand (like recycling, today) and not ready to turn back yet, but on the other hand I’m not at all sure about his ability to make his own way home, given some unfortunate past occurrences.

Instead I ended up carrying him that last little bit to the recycling station, then looking for him behind the bins, and carrying him most of the way home again. I know for sure that he ranges at least two blocks from home, so from there he walked on his own.

Other times, when we’re on our way to the train station for example, we either take him back home and put him indoors, or run or sneak away from him. Which feels unkind, but better than luring him to the centre and then leaving him there to get lost.

Masses and masses of snow overnight, to the point where the front staircase in the garden was barely distinguishable. Which of course led to chaos in public transport everywhere.

Today is my last office day with Urb-it, because my contract there ends this week, so I braved the weather and the traffic and went to the office anyway. A train arrived right on schedule, just as I got to the station in the morning. But that was just dumb luck: there was a 45-minute gap in the list of trains just a short while later.

In the afternoon I wasn’t as lucky with the timing. The monitors kept promising trains in 13 minutes, and in 20 minutes, and so on, but they kept vanishing before they got to Odenplan station. One arrived after 45 minutes of waiting, though, so I got home in the end.

Not the most efficient day, but definitely worth the chance of saying farewell to people I’ve worked so closely with for two years.

There were pretty frost crystals on the bedroom window when we woke up this morning.