Saudalen

Finally the school semester ended and there is time to go shred snow again. The only problem is that my hometown, Oppdal, got none. Magnus and I went down the valley to Sunndalen with a chute on our mind. After one hour drive or so we started hiking to check it out. Not much snow at first, but good enough at the top.



A chute nearby Oppdal mid desember.

Odin

Finally I got to give the icefall Odin a go! It is pretty remote, located way up in the Austerdalen valley. Lars Martin and I drove of at 05.15 for a long day of glacier travel saturday morning the 29th of October. After almost 2hours of walking in the dark we got to the base of the Austerdal glacier. Yet another hour to go, and we were looking at Odin from bellow locating our route. The closer we got, the snow increased in hight and we soon realized that this was unfortunately not the day to push for it.  We walked a bit farther just to satisfy our egos before turning around for the long walkout. We were back in Sogndal around 16.30, hungry, tired and myself a bit bummed we did not reach higher. The glacier will hopefully withstand till next time I got the chance without that much snow.

Getting ready at the parking lot in the dark.

Lars approaching Odin on Austerdal glacier.

Looking at Odin in the snowy weather.

Lars seconding our 1/5th of Odin before returning.

Sorry about the bad pictures, took still frames from the video.

Tufte Glacier

Finally Knut and I went out to try a plan we made during the glacier course a couple weeks ago. With some friends from our class we went to Tufte glacier, Jostedalen the 8th of october for a bluebird day of glacier travel. With the goal of reaching Steinmannen, not far from the glacier plateau, and getting experience in leading, we all left around 6 in the morning for Jostedalen. Looking at the weather forecast it did not seam as the best plan combining icy roads with slippery summer wheels the next day. 


We arrived at Bergset with no incidents ready to walk up the hill to the glacier base impatient to see how much snow there were and if the crevasses were covered or not. The glacier was all white, but we could see the concave immersions of the cracks. After an hour of walking we reached the glacier icefalls and roped up. There were around 50-60cm of new snow which made the travel more difficult and time consuming then expected. The weak snow bridges made it more exciting too and a few of us fell through several times. We turned around probably half way up slightly prior to 2pm, which were our planed time for descent. There were a crust layer at base, which gradually ceased at around 900m. Above we defiantly missed our skis.. With the good feeling of an approaching winter, we were back down at the car 4.30.

Lunchbreak at the way back down   

Wondering why I did not bring my skis