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The last weekend in February we were once again on another adventure to the High Coast (Höga Kusten). The last time we were there it was in October (see post), and there was no snow. We had read about the cross country ski trails in Skuleskogen National Park, and thought hum… That might be nice, good to get away and experience nature. So we did it. We left first thing Saturday morning and arrived there nice and early. We were the only ones in parking lot getting ready, then all of a sudden like 10 cars arrived at the same time and instantly there were 25+ people with snowshoes. Not exactly what we were expecting, but what can you do?

The skiing adventure began on a sketchy boardwalk covered with snow. It was super narrow, and if you slipped you would fall to your doom, and probably break a leg. The boardwalk ended in about 100m and then the trail through the woods started. At first it was nice, and tranquil, with lots of fluffy snow everywhere. This nice fluffy snow soon became not so nice, as we realized it was covering the trail markers. Thus, began the fun and exciting game of find the trail! To make matters worse the trail markers were tiny dark blue dots on the trees, so even if there wasn’t that much snow on the tree, you still couldn’t see the f*&%/#$ blue dots!

What's that you pointing at? Oh... the trail marker!

Besides the trail marker fiasco, none of us had really done back country skiing on cross-country skis before so… It didn’t go quite as planned. And it may have been slightly more hilly than expected… Thus, we may have fallen a few times… And I should add, falling wasn’t so bad, except standing up took forever. It was impossible to stand back up with your pack on, so you had to take it off then stand up, then put pack back on. Also, I should add, having a pack totally throws off your balance, thus making it slightly more difficult to ski.

So, due to these unforeseen circumstances we were going really slow, and the snowshoe group totally passed us, which was really awkward… But it was nice, cause for about 100 m we had a trail to follow! Then we came to a sign and realized our trail turned off their path, and once again we were playing find the blue dot game!

Can you see the trail marker? (Note: This is after I cleared off some snow.)

This time finding the f/&%#¤$ blue dot seriously took us forever. We were (I’m not exaggerating) looking for almost an hour! Till finally we somehow found one almost 100m away.

So I was doing pretty good then… As I was going down a hill my pole got stuck in the snow, and I fell and bent the pole. I was happy the pole broke and not my bones, but it still was not cool. This made life much more difficult, and a major annoyance. I should pause and mention that it was also quite beautiful… As seen in photo below.

The next major incident occurred as I was standing waiting for my friends to catch up, then all of a sudden the snow gave way beneath me, and right leg sunk up to my hip. Apparently I was standing on a little creek.. and now my foot and ski was stuck. After about 10 minutes of struggling and laughing (it was way too funny) I was free.

What should have taken us no more than an hour, hour and a half, took us almost four. But we made it to the cabin all in one piece (barely), which is all that matters.

The next day was quite different from the first, a) we could follow our tracks back, b) we were mainly going uphill (much easier) and c) our packs were lighter (no food or water). It took us no time to return, thus we took some time to explore some of lookout points on the way back. On our drive home we stopped at max burger in Örnsköldsvik for supper. It was an epic way to finish off our epic adventure.

The surprising thing was that despite all the unexpected difficulties, what could have turned into a miserable weekend turned out to be one of the best I ever had thanks to some really great friends. I think just about every time someone fell we all just laughed! And every time we couldn’t find the trail we just would swear in different languages and laugh about it.  The ridiculousness of it all made it all the more awesome. It just goes to show that anything can be awesome, if you are with awesome friends.