Ski and Paddle Norway 2009

Distance 37km | Time 7hrs | Ascent 680m | Descent 650m

After a comfortable stay with the Reitan family I was completely refreshed and ready to finish the North Trondelag section with a ski to Royrvik. Like all my stays in North Trondelag the hospitality was fantastic and even the kids made me welcome here.

Leif and his brother owned a fair bit of land between here and Limingen. A lot of it was forested and they used scooters to transport the wood. I should be able to ski from one farm to the other on these old tracks. This would replace 8 km of hard road snow with 8 km of interesting forest.

I found the tracks easily enough and followed them through the spruce forest and then up the hillside to the birch forest. It was quite steep in places and my skis were not waxed well, making them slippery and hard work. It was a nice ski however and I got a slight view down Tunnsjo lake.

At the top the weather changed and a blizzard arrived from the east. It was a strong wind, driving snow and poor visibility. Luckily like most quick changes in the weather it did not last long and by the time I had descended into the spruce on the Limingen side it had blown over.

The descent to Limingen through the spruce was steep. Too steep to ski directly so I left the tracks and made large traverses in the forest using the deep snow to slow me up. Eventually the forest spilt me onto the fields of Fjellvang farm which was Leifs brothers farm.

I decided to ski across a narrow section of Limingen lake here to avoid a detour on the road. There was a large patch of open water just east of the farm which was caused by currents in the hydro scheme. I went north west on a scooter track made by ice fishermen.

The fishermen were fishing for roye which is a very red trout type fish. They bored a hole in the ice with a large auger and then fished through this whole. The 3 fishermen had mad about 20 holes in all. I took a picture of one then carried on acros the lake to the north shore. There were no tracks here and the going was difficult with deep wet snow on top of the ice. Luckily it was only a km but it let me know the lake was no option.

I reached the road by Limingen island. From here my task was simple – follow the road north west for 26 km to Royrvik. The road was well covered in snow and the wind had deposited spindrift onto its surface. As such it was fast but my skis were still slippery. The weather however had improved a lot and the sun broke through in many places.

The uphill sections were testing and my arms were working hard to stop me slipping back even with a lot of wax. The downhill sections were fast and generally OK but there was the occasional area with gravel on the surface. I was making good progress.

I passed the old rickety farm at Deviktangen and soon reached Devik itself Devik was a couple of farms and a collection of simple leisure cabins. Below me on the west was the vast white expanse of the frozen surface of Limingen lake. It looked difficult to ski across even from here.

The final 10 km to Royrvik were tedious. The road surface was covered in ice and packed snow. It offered my skis very little grip and was tiring to ski along except for the downhill sections. On these I went like a rocket. There were almost no cars on this road.

At last I reached Royrvik. It was not before time. It seemed a friendly town with about 2 to 300 houses and a school, shop, petrol station and a simple hotel. The shop was still open so I bought some treats and then checked into the hotel.

Andre who had a couple of days with friends in Sweden arrived by car. He checked into the same hotel. Inevitably we will go together for a couple of days through Borgefjell. Also at the hotel were a couple of hydropower employees. They were measuring the snow depth to calculate how much water they would have in the reseviour later in the season. They were going the same way on snow scooters tomorrow so would make great tracks for us to ski on to Viermahytta cabin.

It had been a good morning but the long ski along the road was dull. It was the third day in a row with a lot of road work and it was getting tedious. Luckily it was now finished for a while. Mercifully todays road stretch of 26 km had gone relatively quickly. Tomorrow I could look forward to the mountains of Borgefjell. It was Norways second National Park and one of the biggest.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 7:11 pm and is filed under Update. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.