After dodging Iceland-born volcanic ash while crossing the Atlantic this morning, Emily, Forrest Twombly and I arrived to the higher latitudes of Arctic Norway in great spirits. Two hours spent rigging our ski-bikes for the weeks of adventure ahead were followed by a pleasant bike ride to a cozy b&b in the island city of Tromso. Home to the world’s most northerly 4-season port, this community of 30,000+ souls is also surrounded by a great variety of Arctic mountains. Our inaugural ski tour of the trip began at 8 p.m. with an easy bike ride to the base of a friendly mountain on the east side of town. We climbed and skied to the backdrop of the setting sun sliding slowly beneath a cluster of Teton-like peaks on the northwestern horizon. Wow.
The snowpack is deep, there’s still good powder snow on shaded aspects above 300 meters, and the mountains seem to stretch on forever. Skies were mostly clear today and more of the same is in the forecast for the days ahead. In the coming days, we’ll pedal away from Tromso to explore a remote peninsula farther out along the coast–with open views to the ocean and the near-midnight sun. Tom Hite (who has taken the place of our friend Dylan Crossman, who is recovering from a recent injury), will be landing in Tromso on Monday–and we expect to have a great camp in place upon his arrival.
Internet access may be quite limited for us in the coming weeks, but we’ll do our best to keep the updates flowing. For now, enjoy this nice photo of the region in summer that we picked up from Wikipedia. We skied from the spot at which this photo was captured on Friday.
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