Snow report Northern Norway, 02/13/2016

Snow condition

As we climbed up the south-facing slopes of Mount Okla, all I could really think about was where in Norway it's best to have nasty shark bites in your surfboard repaired. Here, 150 km south of Trondheim (and the location of my last CR), there is still a lot of snow sticking out of the gullies and hollows that shouldn't be there. Fortunately, we found such a gully on the descent, even untracked. Unlimited riding fun in there.

Snow quality

Wonderful. Below -20° in the valley, a little warmer at the top thanks to the inversion: not much settling or anything like that. 20-40 cm of fine, dry, brittle powder snow with little or no wind influence on a soft base.

It was a 2 issue for the region, with danger areas on steep slopes, even in the southern exposure we were traveling on, even with low additional loads. Wording: "Look for areas where the wind recently has deposited snow, typically behind ridges, ribs and in gullies." - varsom.no Only this drift snow was not really drift snow in our case and was also (in my opinion) very well connected to the old snow. Although we didn't dig a profile, we weren't able to cause any cracking, clod formation or anything similar. (Note: In the photo it looks like strong winds, but it's just the very well consolidated old snow)

Overall impression

I have to give it another 4*, the descent through the untracked gully was by far my best so far in Norway, and you could see from the faces of my touring partners that it was just as much fun for them. Keep up the good work!