Ice Climbing Rjukan (Krokan sector)

Yesterday, we went to do some ice climbing in Rjukan (70km from Notodden). We went there with Mathilde's brother and a friend of him, they came to Norway especially to do ice climbing. So they invited us to a ice climbing initiations.
On this picture: Francois

If you like climbing, you have to try ice climbing ! I am fond of rock climbing, and I wanted to try ice climbing, and it's really very nice! And it's more technical than you can think, it's not only about strength !

The ice is really good now, even if it's not so cold!




















Enjoy the nice pictures:
Red jacket: François, Green Jacket: Sylvain, Black jacket: Mathilde, Yellow jacket: Me.

off tracks cross country skiing

At the last lesson of cross country skiing we had a nice experience to go out of the tracks to feel the deep snow.

Before during this lesson we had also learned how to skate, their are three methods: the simple, double and paddling. The thing was that usually we put some wax under the skis when we go for classic style, but not in skating.
So we where now in the deep snow without wax...and that was very funny!

Like you can see most of us had some close experience with the snow like Mads on the upper picture ;-), and Camille also soon.

On this picture Carole-Anne and Taisa have are trying to stand up in the deep snow witch is sometimes very difficult. The technique is to compact first the snow before pushing on your poles!

But anyway it was again a nice moment in our magical Erasmus life.

Art in University

In the morning when we arrive at university, we can meet some new friends, last week they where hanging in the sky, now they are sitting near of us.
These aliens are very nice, you can eat, and talk with them, they are not hostile at all !

Thanks to the art student to take care of the decoration of our university !

tomorrow there is an exposition in the exposition room (near the cafeteria).

Ice fishing

We went with the university to a lake to do some ice fishing. (the place is kept secret because the fishing spots remains secret!). 

We had a quite cold morning it was

 -17°c so we hurried to make a fire to warm up, and after to cook on.

So to practice ice fishing, first you need to be sure the ice is big and strong enough!

Here we had about 70cm of fresh ice so  that was not a problem.

Then you take the 'drill' (on the right of hakon) and you drill a nice hole into the ice, you clean all the snow and you are ready to fish.

This video shows how to drill....it's not exactly that way, but it works.

We learned also what kind of fish we have fished, how to clean them and to cook them.

The two first one are Arctic char, and the last one is a perch with a lot of bones.

Advices from a fisherman: 

You can see in the following video in exclusive how to fish Arctic Char.....Enjoy

Ski "Randonnée" in Konsberg Ski center.

Yesterday we joint the group A who where in Kongsberg Ski center for their lesson of snowboarding. We went to do some kind of alpine skiing: called "ski randonnée". The idea is to go up with your skis like in cross country skiing, but instead of wax to not slip down, you use some "skins", you scratch under your skis when you go up, and you take it off when you go down.

The difference with cross country skiing is that you can go up in real deep snow, and much steep hills. The other difference is that you can fix you shoes like alpine shoes to go down.

This video shows you how easy it is to go up :)

And this video you can enjoy my fall when I came down, Like you can see it really looks like alpine skis when we are going down

Trip to Selsli

This weekend we have organized a Cross country skiing trip to Selsli. On the 2 maps we can see the way we took.

We started from Notodden, more precisely from Tynnemira lake until Selsli DNT Cabin, it's a little bit more than 20km and about 600m of vertical drop. You have to count about 5 hours to reach the cabin.

Greg took the lead to give us a good rhythm, we arrived in Darstul after a little bit more than 2 hours.

There our group became bigger, two persons joined us. You can see on the picture the real cross country skiing movements realized by Mathilde....Runar (our cross country teacher) would be proud of you.

Here we are crossing a lake, the ice is big enough, but for the way back we took the way around the lake, the water on the ice scared us.

We reached the cabin at 3a clock pm, after a lot of hours cross country skiing.

On the picture from the left to the right:

Marie, Greg, Christine, I, Mathilde, Kalle. And the picture was taken by Roar who i would like to thanks, not only for the picture, but for the advices of this trip, and his help, so from all our team, Thanks a lot :-)

After a warm night for some of us ( those who slept in the cabin) and a little bit colder one (for those who slept outside) we woke up with a very nice weather, and a warm sun.

On this picture Janko in his snowsleepingroom :-)

Because we had a comfortable night, we decided to reach the top near of Selsli. the sight was wonderful with the nice weather we could see Blefjell, Lifjell, and the Gaustatoppen, and Notodden's lake with the fog over it.

The coming back was quite faster than the way to the cabin, it was most of the time down hill, so the problem was to not fall.

Enjoy this few videos of down hill in cross country skis: