Hemsedal, December 2005.
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Visiting Norway is kind of a dichotic experience. Getting there is remarkably cheap at under £20 on Ryan Air. Accommodation in the ski resorts is also great value with cabins and apartments available for under £10 per person per night. Eating and drinking though… Woah! A meal in a mid-range restaurant will set you back £30 and beer costs upwards of £5 per pint. Boarding in Norway is kind of the same. Some places are snow-sure from late November and Norway has a couple of world-class resorts, though the mountains are much smaller than their Alpine counterparts, which makes for a distinctly different atmosphere. It’s pretty hard to beat Norway for snow cover at the extreme start and end of the season though and that’s why we chose it for our December 3rd trip.
Kev and I caught the last train south from Lancaster to Wigan on Friday night and then hopped a taxi to my Parents house in Crank. I had a couple of beers and then fell asleep in front of the fire for a few hours before waking up again at 4AM for the taxi to John Lennon Airport. As I sat, sleepy-eyed waiting for our flight, I was surprised to see that despite the early hour, a crowd of hardy holiday-makers were already sucking back beers at the bar. I must be getting old I suppose. The call came to board and we shuffled across the tarmac to the Ryan Air 737 and took off into the cold, dark morning. We enjoyed about an hour of sunlight while above the clouds before diving back into the gloom towards Torp Sandefjord. Our Ryan Air flights were great value and I’d recommend them if your flying to Oslo from the North West, though it’s worth remembering that there are a few hidden extras. Firstly, they charge a hefty £32 for return ski or board carriage and secondly, the coach connection from Torp to Oslo is an additional £26 return. Kev and I both had ski equipment, but we managed to save on the cost of carriage by putting all our stuff in one bag :-)
We arrived a little early in Oslo and couldn’t check into the hostel, so we set off to explore. Oslo turned out to be pretty, neat and typically Scandinavian, though lacking the ‘wow’ factor one associates with European capitals like Paris or Prague. We started out up Karl Johan’s gate, the main shopping street towards the palace, where we were lucky enough to catch the changing of the guard which looks something like an elaborate military dance-off, though one can understand the need to keep moving in the cold Norwegian winter. After checking into the hostel, I fell asleep for a couple of hours and awoke to find that we’d gained a room-mate, a young Brazilian named Oliver. After a nice hot shower, Kev and I struck out to find some food, settling on Mexican at TGI Fridays. Like every other time I’ve eaten at an American chain restaurant outside of the states it turned out to be a big mistake. Why I keep doing this I have no idea! You might think that a chain like TGI Friday’s would be cheaper than the independent restaurants, but we found quite the opposite. A shared starter, mid-priced main-course and desert came in at around £30 each, whereas a similar meal in a little Italian place we found cost about half that (and the waitresses didn’t keep asking if we’d like another round of £6 beers either)! We didn’t get much sleep that night, as Oliver woke up screaming something in Portuguese in the wee hours, nevertheless, I started the next day feeling relatively refreshed and opted for an authentic Norwegian breakfast of gherkins, brown cheese and hard boiled eggs. Our hostel, the Perminalen may have been expensive at £25 per night, but the food, facilities and location were all fantastic.
We set out early the next morning on the Fjordane Ekspressen for the four hour transfer to Hemsedal. The coach was comfortable and the transfer was good value at £40 return but remember your student card as it will save you £20 on the journey. If you’re not a student, just say you are anyway - it worked for us ;-) The scenery gets progressively nicer and the snow deeper as you leave Oslo for the long climb up into the mountains, passing dramatic cliffs, frozen lakes and huge icicles that seem to be hanging off just about everything. We finally arrived at Hemsedal Trøym around 2PM and caught the world’s most expensive taxi (£20 for just 2KM!) to the resort. If you want to avoid this and save some cash, Hemsedal village is also connected to the resort by a 2KM ski-trail which is marked on the piste-map and is a pretty easy hike even with a backpack and board bag. If you’re not feeling very adventurous, the ski-bus also covers this route, so download the schedule before you leave.
When you arrive in the resort, it’s hard not be impressed by the place. The ski centre sits in a deep valley between three impressive peaks in the Jotunheimen range, which give a much more Alpine atmosphere than nearby Geilo. Our apartment was pleasant, with passable cooking facilities, dishwasher, cable TV and a drying room for our gear. Our apartment would have comfortably slept four people giving an amazing low-season price of just £6 per person, per night, several times cheaper than our hostel in Oslo! You can also ski to the door of the Totten apartments, which makes popping back for lunch easy. You even get free WiFi coverage, though you’ll need a pretty serious aerial if you’re on the ground floor. You can book the Totten apartments on the Ski Star website. It’s also worth buying your ski pass online as it includes free night-skiing on the three floodlit slopes, which is a big plus in December as the sun sets before 3PM. Like many of the Scandinavian resorts, Hemsedal is not the best for Après Ski. In high season and at the weekends the few bars and clubs get pretty full, but even then they don’t compare to those in the French Alps, Andorra or Switzerland. Given the high price of food and drink, you’ll also need deep pockets, so it’s really got to be all about the skiing in Hemsedal.
Monday was our first day on the slopes and an emotional roller-coaster. We set out early and found awesome snow conditions. After a couple of practice runs down the green slope near the apartment, we were both buzzing from our first powder of the season and ready to hit the big runs, then… disaster struck, or so it seemed at least. Half of the runs that we were expecting to be open had closed. It wasn’t for lack of snow cover either, rather it seemed to be a cost-cutting measure until the package holiday makers flooded in the following week. Fortunately, we lucked-out that afternoon when a mechanical fault led to the opening of another lift and a nice summit to resort green run for us to play around on. We even tried a bit of off-piste, though the extreme cold on the mountain had given the powder an unpleasant crunchy outer shell. My pet challenge for the week was set on day one as we returned to the apartment for lunch - I had to traverse the snow covered car park which led to our building without taking off my board or resorting to the ‘snowboarder hop’. My nemesis sat at the bottom of a short green run before the final slope to our apartment and was about 100 meters across, making it tricky to keep enough momentum from the shallow green, especially in the deep powder. After a day of whizzing down a nice 2KM red, we were both pretty upbeat despite the closed slopes. The conditions remained great all week under the overcast but snowy skies and several times in the afternoons we’d found ourselves completely alone on the silent, floodlit slopes as dusk fell, which was a unique and memorable experience. The rest of the week was pretty uneventful, though on Thursday, I had a bit of a clatter near the lift when a fellow snowboarder re-aligned my jaw for me. Could it be karmic retribution for all those kids I hit during my first couple of trips? Just as the selection of open runs began to feel restrictive, the resort opened yet another set, keeping us happy. The last day was spectacular; the snow-clouds moved on leaving us clear skies, awesome views and a fresh set of runs. When it came time to head back down and catch the coach to Oslo, I even made the car-park run that had beaten me all week, which was the perfect end to a great holiday.
On the Saturday as we travelled back, Mohamed El Baradei received a Nobel peace prize in Olso for his role in slowing the spread of nuclear weapons, sort of an awkward reminder that as I spoil myself here, there’s a world full of problems out there. Maybe if everywhere just had good boarding, we wouldn’t have so many problems? Mind you, I hear the mountains around Tehran have some good slopes, so that’s probably bollocks :-)