Basic Crosscountry Ski Course (08.02.-12.02.2021)

During the week of February 8th to 12th, we had the basic crosscountry ski course. After a one-hour bus ride, we arrived near Evje. We checked into our rooms and then had our first meeting with skis at the bus to go to the ski area. The goal was to master the technique of crosscountry skiing by the end of the week. This is a type of skiing where you mostly go on backpacking tours. Due to the size of our group, we were divided into two groups of 12 people each.

First, we focused on waxing the skis and getting a feel for them. On the first day, we mainly did simple exercises for turning while standing and made our first attempts at skiing. In the evening, we had a theory lesson on "Which wax to use at which temperatures." Afterwards, I fell tired into bed. The next day, we had more technique training on the mountain and on a frozen lake. After a lunch break in the sun, we went on a small tour to try out what we had learned. In fact, it worked quite well for me.

On the third and fourth day, we went on a tour all day and incorporated a few technique exercises in between. I really enjoyed that, but it was also very exhausting. And when we had to navigate with a map and compass, it got really exciting. The landscape looks very different with snow and ice than it does on the map. But after a few tries, we also managed that.

On the last day, we built two small jumps, a moguls slope, and a slalom course. We were allowed to go all out on these. It's almost a miracle that no one in our group was seriously injured, because almost everyone fell during the landing of the larger jump. In the end, we had a downhill race where I finished fifth (out of 24) and won a wooden cutting board ;).

After that, we went back to Kristiansand, where we had classes at the university for another week, and then I flew to Tromsø with five others from my study program.

More about that in the next post :D

Yours, Maike