Skiing at last!

The weather has not been cooperating since we got here.  The day after we arrived, we got about 6" of lovely, fluffy white stuff....but it was -19°C (-2°F), so not very appealing to be outside.  This continued for over a week, surprising the locals.  I don't know how many times we heard that it hasn't been this cold or snowy in November for 30 years!  The big lake Storsjön froze over the first weekend in December, when it usually doesn't happen until after Christmas.

By the time it got less cold, we both had CAUGHT colds, so a few more days went by with no skiing to speak of.  Lars skiied back and forth in the driveway a few times, and Sheila did likewise once.  A "warm" day of -8°C/17°F came along, so we walked up the hill a ways and found somed rough trails made by snowmobiles and much travelled by critters.

The house you see at the right is next door to ours.

We have also had a lot of trouble finding places to ski.  There's a farm 5 kilometers away that grooms their forest occasionally (when they feel like it), but finding the correct road proved to be a challenge.  We tried a couple of other, more formal areas, but 5 days above freezing, with hard freezes overnight, left everything too icy for our old bones to risk falling.

Then we got a nice snowfall of about 7cm/3", and decided maybe it would be a good idea to PAY to ski somewhere with consistent grooming, so we went over to Skistadion and bought day passes....which is a much more reasonable proposition here than at home!  55 SEK / $5.50 each.  This also gave us a chance to ask about trail markings, which are a totally different system here than at home.  In the US, trails are color-coded by difficulty--green is easiest, blue harder, black difficult.  There's no hard and fast standard, but each ski area ranks its own trails, based on the terrain they have.  So Sheila sticks to Green at Eldora, but is fine with Blue at Snow Mountain Ranch, which has a lot of very flat terrain not found at Eldora.

Here, however, as in more of Europe, trails are color-coded by LENGTH.  Yellow = 5K, Green = 10K, Black = 15K, more or less.  Some signs show more than one color, and when you come to a split, you follow the color you want.  BUT!! Don't assume that the Yellow trail at one ski area is equivilant difficulty to a Yellow trail elsewhere!  They may both be 5K, but one is flat, going around a marsh, and the other is entirely on the side of a mountain.  Research is needed!

Elljusspår = Lighted trail

Övriga spår = Other trails

Motionspår = Exercise trail

Dogs allowed on trail.  Dogs must be leashed at all times.

Torråsenslingan = Loop trail at Torråsen

Spikbodarna = Another ski area

Partial trail map

Anyway, enough of that.  We had a lovely day on the easiest possible trail, 5K around the marsh at Rannåsen.  We were surprised by the number of people doing skijoring, or skiing while being pulled by one or more dogs! They go very fast, so we didn't get any pics.

            Absolutely perfect conditions!

                    Trail signage in use                                            Small stream crossing under trail

                    Rannåsenträsk (marsh)                                    It got a bit breezy passing the marsh!

                Lars in the lead, as often happens                             The trails split here

                        Can it be???                                                            YES!  A downhill section!

We definitely need to get our act together earlier, though.  By the time we'd sorted out where EXACTLY the trailhead was and gotten our skis on, it was after noon.  We were finishing up around 2PM, and the light was distinctly fading by that point.  Not dark, but tending that way.  We either need to start sooner, or start skiing on the lighted trails!