Bluebird Day at Geilo

March 12, 2018

Bluebird Day at Geilo

Another week has come and gone and suddenly I've been in Norway for seven months. I'm really not sure where the time went, but I can tell you that they've been seven amazing months and I'm looking forwards to the last three and a half and all they will bring. I've been going pretty non-stop the past few weeks which really doesn't slow anything down except me, as I begin to use up my fuel reserves. While I didn't really have much going on this week after school, a looming social studies test kept me from relaxing completely and I am really excited to be able to take a much needed pause from the craziness this week and coming weekend. Although I haven't really had time to sit down and chill out, I have been doing some really cool things and checking stuff off my Norway bucket list. If you missed last week's post (you should at least go look at the pictures, the view was incredible), I went downhill skiing in Hemsedal and this weekend it was back to the mountains to ski Geilo, another of Norway's amazing ski centers. Since the rest of the week was pretty ordinary, and to keep this post from being miles long, I'll skip to this weekend's excursion.

After school on Friday, my host family met me about halfway home with the car for the ride up to the cabin we'd be staying at which belongs to my host aunt and her family. We tried to beat the traffic but ended up in the thick of it anyways and the crawl from the city began. We passed the time with songs and audiobooks and games and stopped along the way for very Norwegian travel food, pølser (hotdogs, but they taste a little different). After five or so hours we'd made it to the cabin and settled in with the warmth of the fireplace. It was already a little late and I didn't last too long before heading to bed for one of the best night's sleep in a long time. On Saturday we didn't waste much time in the morning; the mountain opened at 9:30 and I wanted to get in as much skiing as possible. The sky was bright blue, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, it was relatively warm, and there was virtually no wind. I literally could not have asked for a better day. Plus, it was a very short walk from the cabin to the lifts.

It's my host siblings' first season alpine skiing so they were going to start on some easier hills while I went off to explore for the morning. The resort has two sides connected by a ski bus so I decided to take some runs on the smaller side closest to the cabin to start. I ended up spending about an hour and a half on that side after finding a trail with some ungroomed powder on the side for me to ski in :)) I sat on the chairlift twice with the same man, and we struck up a conversation. Turns out he grew up in Geilo but at some point moved to Colorado (right by Copper, funnily enough) and has been living there since, coming back to Geilo to visit every once in a while. When I had skied as much as I wanted on the first side (making sure to get to have gone to both peaks there), I took the ski bus over to the other to see what I could find. This side was bigger so I prioritized by going to the highest peak first (gotta find the best view). This turned out to be a VERY good idea. As I rode the T-bar up, I noticed what seemed to be a ton of lightly skied fresh powder. The closer I got the better it looked, and I did quite a few runs there, floating on the light snow and embracing the fluffiness the east US almost never has to offer. That's the thing with Norwegian skiing-- it has both the fast snow of the east and powder of the west. I personally love the powder but it is nice to be able to fly down a trail as fast as possible every so often.

I would have been perfectly content staying on those two trails the rest of the day, but I only had one day to ski and wanted to cover as much ground as possible. I did a few more runs on other peaks before I went down to the bottom of the main lift for lunch. It was warm and sunny so I sat down outside and ate in the sun before getting back up and going to see a new part of the mountain. While the skiing was good pretty much everywhere, it was definitely best where I had been earlier, so I headed back that way. A few runs in I got a text from Anne saying she was going to come to the side I was on. I met her back at the main lift a little later and was very happy when she said she wanted to go to the area I had loved so much. We headed back there and spent most of the rest of the afternoon over there, playing in the powder. It was completely perfect and only got perfecter (I like to make my own words) as we found more areas of untouched snow. Heaven.

We skied until we were tired then headed back to the cabin for dinner. I was quite hungry after a full day of skiing and the paste carbonara tasted like the best thing on earth. I was the good kind of tired you get after a long day of being outside and lying on the couch after a good meal couldn't have felt better. We had a quiet evening, what we all needed, before turning in early. This morning was slow and relaxing. We didn't quite have enough time to ski and it was hard to see much in the snow, so we started packing up and then went sledding. There was a little designated sledding hill on the side of the kids' ski hill that we played at for a while, having competitions of who could go the farthest or do the best (unintentional) backflip off the sled when the edge dug into the snow. Many runs later, we made our way back to the cabin to finish packing up and begin the trek home.

The way home went much faster than the way there, and we were back in time for dinner. I'm still quite tired as I'm writing this, but in a good way, ready for a new week but very glad that I start late on Mondays :)

Word of the Post:
kø = traffic (also means a line as in queue)

More pretty Norway pictures!