Finse Norway Bushcraft?

[Sleepy Weasel]

Hallo Peeps
Just come back frome 4 days snowholing out in Finse, Norway. Had a lovely time and even managed to come back with all my fingers and toes! The weather stayed at a balmy -6 Centigrade with unmentionable windchill. For most of the time it was lots of spindrift snow which gets EVERYWHERE!

This wasn't a Bushcrafting trip out there as there was no bushes to be found, in fact the only bit of wood I saw out there was the hazel withies they use to mark paths out there in the snow, and I wasn't about to move any of those!

Did an ascent of Finsenuten on our second day which someone told me it is higher than Ben Nevis. Lots of crampon and iceaxe work to get there, and only managed to spike myself once with my own crampon point in the back of the calf(nice square hole there now!) Lovely views from the top but the wind just blew straight through you

While we were there the Norwegian Search and Rescue Teams and the Norwegian SARDA were having an exercise around us, we even came back to our snowhole to find about 6 Team members stood on the roof. after some friendly banter we explained to them what they were standing on and they moved, turns out we needn't have worried, we couldn't collapse the roof on the final day with 4 of us jumping up and down on it!
All the SRT members were using reindeer skins to sleep on and nordic skis to get around, something I may look into next year!.

LESSONS LEARNT

Finse, in March, is cold

Don't try to walk in deep powder snow, skis or snowshoes were invented for a reason

Snowholes can get up to +5 Centigrade for a short while with 3 burners going

Norwegian women are very healthy looking!

Spindrift snow gets EVERYWHERE!

 

[shocks]

Sounds great but we really need is pictures!!!!

 

[SAS_MAN]

is i agree pics would be good but it sounds great i would like to go to norway whats it like there in regards to mountain huts

 

[Sleepy Weasel]

Hi SAS_Man
I'll get some pics on here as soon as I can figure out how to do it. The scenery is breathtaking, but you get no sense of distance at all, You could be 50 metres from a rock or 150 metres from it, difficult to judge.

There are plenty of mountain huts dotted around there, though we only saw the chimneys of some as the snow was that deep! There was one near our snowhole that had a satelite dish on the side.

Getting around without skis or snowshoes is miserable, up to your knees most of the time and up to your thighs the rest. The cold isn't as much a problem as I thought it would be, even though it was about -6 most of the time, it was a dry cold and bearable.

The Norwegian Mountain Rescue guys thought we were barmy doing this without skis or snowshoes, but they could see we were otherwise well equiped(being a member of a british MR team helps too!)

Norway itself it a lovely country, expensive, but everything works, the trains run dead on time as well as the buses and the people are friendly(and the girls are beautiful!). If it wasn't so expensive I'd move myself and the family out there in a flash! 10 quid a pint? I don't think so!

Now, how to get the pics on the post........

 

[big_swede]

Finse is a lovely area, I've been there 4 times, and in the neighbour hood even more. Next time rent some skis and try to make the finse-aurland route, it is stunning. You can sleep in huts or in tent/snowhole, really recommended.