Friday 11 January 2013

Up north

We did our almost traditional january trip north this week. Out of the original five, only two (craziest?) decided to go this time. The two were my good friend Jani and myself. We headed out at about eight on monday morning, with about 800 km of driving ahead of us. I took a couple of quick snapshots along the way:
As can be seen from the lower picture, there were some nice scenery along the way, but the dull gray weather did not do them justice. After about 11 hours on the road we arrived at our destination.

Our first day out in the wild was gray and foggy:
Jani took this picture of me just before the slight drizzle coming down froze on my camera and forced me to stop taking pictures:
We managed to ski quite a bit during the day and even saw some birds. Didn't catch any though. After a sauna and dinner, I had no trouble getting to sleep. As soon as I put my head on the pillow and pulled the blanket over me, I slept until the alarm clock woke me up in the morning for another day of skiing.

Our second day started out with clear skies and a nice crispy -17 C
We skied thru a few small swamps and headed up the hill that can be seen on the horizon in the picture above.
 The view from the top was spectacular:
At the top, we stopped for lunch:
With the sun low on the horizon, the trees and the sky had blue and purple color:

This time we didn't even see birds, except for one black grouse that flew across the road just as we got back to our car. Eventhough we didn't catch anything for the second year in a row, I still want to go out again in the future.

Saturday 5 January 2013

Getting ready

I'm doing a nightshift at work tonight and on monday morning it's time to head north. A couple of days of peace and quiet, skiing in deep snow. Despite all the other stuff that I've been busy with, I have managed to get most of my gear packed for monday. I'll post something from our trip when I get back home, that is, if I manage to get any decent pictures.