Northern rain

Soggy snowy Otta town

There sure is a lot of snow in my snow search - its almost everywhere in mountainous Norway. However, here in the South it has turned a bit soggy, and crusty as it cools.

Yesterdays storm spun around to the south and came in warm and very soggy, raining me out of Stranda. If it was dumping snow there I would have liked to have stayed - its a pretty awesome place, but I made the decision to head out of the South. If I was still here next week, I would definitely go back to Stranda after the next snowfall.

Even if I was at a ski hill today, I probably wouldn't have skied. I called up Frode at Hemsedal, and he said that it snowed tons last night (20-30cm), but was raining there this morning. It was probably snowing on the upper half of the mountain, and it will get cold again there, probably tonight, but to ski the good snow there I would have had to be on a flashlight mission at 4am!

With any luck it will snow some more in the southern mountains and cover the crust that will be sure to have formed, but it will take a fair amount to satisfy the Chamois skis, hungry for bottomless snow. I am now sitting on a tilting train, sending the snow search way North to Narvik, in the arctic, if I can connect with a bus tomorrow morning.













The sea was stormy as I was leaving Stranda on the bus last night. The wind was screaming up the fjord around the corner, and the waves were coming into the dock in town, next to the ferry.

It was a(nother) dark and stormy night!

Later on, passing over a high road pass, it was really windy and snowy, but it warmed up a bunch by this morning as I was waiting for the train in the small town of Otta.


There was some nice looking terrain around Otta, (see above photo), but it was so soggy, so I didn't venture up into the hills. I have no doubt that there is some good snow above a certain altitude, maybe 1200m today, but it would also have been very windy up there, and hard to get to.




On the train to Trondheim I passed through Oppdal, a ski resort town at about 500m high. I was hoping to visit it now, but it looks like this at the town:

...and after todays high freezing line, I will not stop there.




This trip further North will take up most of the rest of the Norway trip, but hopefully the snow is cold up there, and I may be able to ski down South again on Wednesday if it snows a bunch, depending on how the trains etc works out, before I fly back South on Thursday, returning to Chamonix ready for the pre season warm up to continue...

This current storm is linked to a depression over central europe, which is bringing some precipitation for the Chamonix valley, snow for the mid mountain! Bring it on!!!