Back in Tromsø: Ullstinden and Stortinden

Bergen is a nice place, but Tromsø is nicer and it is good to be home. Here there is still about 50 cm snow around the house and skiing conditions in the mountains are good, so with sunny weather in the weekend we went out for some ski touring. We decided on Ullstinden on the mainland on Saturday and Stortinden on Ringvassøya on Sunday. Ullstinden is always a nice trip with fantastic views to the Lyngen Alps from the top, and this time with good snow for skiing down. 

We had never been up Stortinden before, and although the top has good views and easy skiing, the start and end are a bit messy through low trees and big rocks. We also left it a bit late in the day and an icy crust had already formed on the spring snow, making skiing a bit harder for us. But it was a good afternoon trip nevertheless.

Start to Ullstinden

Up through the forest

Heading to the top

View to the Lyngen Alps, in the clouds

View to Sunday's top Stortinden (in the middle)

Ptarmigan tracks in evening light

Start to Stortinden

Awkward forest at the start

First view of the top of Stortinden

Me heading to the top

View towards Saturday's top Ullstinden (middle) with Lyngen in the background

View towards Tromsøya in the middle and Tromsdalstinden to the left

Crusty snow

Bergen #5: Weekend on Hardangervidda

Tony came down to Bergen for a long weekend and brought some sunny weather with him. We took the train up to Finse for a 2-day ski trip to Geiterygghytte and back in beautiful spring weather. On the way back to Bergen we took the tourist route via the Flåm railway to Flåm followed by a boat trip through Nærøyfjorden to Gudvangen. A welcome break from the grey weather in Bergen and the counting of fission tracks.

Finse station

Route to Geiterygghytte

Route back to Finse

Interesting cloud formations and sun dog

The snow was very icy, unfortunately

View from Flåm

Brekkefossen in the Flåm valley

Flåm valley

Flåm church

Nærøyfjord

Nærøyfjord near Gudvangen

Bergen #4: Rain

Bergen has lived up to its reputation of being wet in the 2 weeks that I have now been working here. But this morning, the sky was blue and the sun was shining for a few hours, before the next hail showers came in, and I made a detour over Løvstakken on my way to the university.

View to the east, towards Ulriken

View to the northeast

On the top of Løvstakken

Student joke?

Sunny day

Our suburb, Hamna, baking in the sun after fresh snow falls

Excellent skiing conditions on Tromsøya

It is snowing, finally!

This year's January has been the driest January ever in Tromsø, according to the local weather bureau. But last night it finally started snowing; 15 cm of fresh snow overnight and another 10 cm or so during the day. Beautiful powder snow for our first ski trip of the season. We only did a short trip up the very popular local hill Rødtinden, but we had great fun skiing through deep powder snow. This is what it should look like in Tromsø in the winter!

Tony on the way up through the forest.

Nice deep powder snow, and still snowing.

Back in Tromsø - snowshoe trip up Kjølen

There is more ice than snow in Tromsø when we got back. We don't have the extreme cold temperatures as in other parts of Europe (-23C in The Netherlands!), but today the temperature has dropped to -16C, which is quite cold for Tromsø. As we didn't want to start our skiing season on hard icy snow, we decided to go for a snowshoe trip instead - a short trip up the local mountain Kjølen in beautiful winter weather. Hopefully we will get some fresh snow next week.

Tony on the top of Kjølen

Beautiful light and a nearly full moon

Puerto Varas - last day of the trip

We had no problem selling the bikes, we made some people happy with a good deal on virtually new bikes and we were happy to get some money back. Puerto Varas and the surrounding area, the lake district, have a very strong German history, which is obvious in the old architecture and their interest in German style cakes (they even have a day of the cakes - dia del kuchen!). So the last day in Puerto Varas we walked a tourist trail along a number of old (ca 1880-1935 period) houses and churches and sampled some of the cakes.

Checking our flight details the day before we left we found out that Spanair (which was supposed to fly us from Madrid to Copenhagen) had gone bust and had canceled all flights. Fortunately we found this out in time and managed to buy a near identical flight with Iberia so we had a smooth journey home to Tromsø.

The beach in Puerto Varas, on lake Llanquihue. In the distance, volcanoes Osorno on the left and Calbuco on the right.

 Puerto Varas has a populair swimming beach.

 German-style Casa Maldonado built in 1890.

The German-style church in Puerto Varas was modeled on the Marien Kirche in the Black Forest in Germany. 

The very interesting museum Pablo Fierro, focussing on the architectural history of the region.