Wierdos of Telemark and other stories

After last weekend's aceness, yesterday was a disaster...
The cunning plan was to stay in on Friday night and not go to the pub - get up early, grab our already-packed kit, load up the ultra-relaible Suzuki jeep and head up north for a flat-mates skiing session. It didnt all go wrong from the start as we actually managed to stay in - however the amount of faffing in the morning was at least European championship standard, if not Olympic - despite alarms going off at 6.15 - it was still 9.30 when we departed the house in the wrong direction.

Back on course, we cruised out of town - heading out towards the Forth Bridge - where my co-pilot noticed the subterranean level of the fuel guage. This, being a regular occurence did not have me undully worried, until I remembered that there are no motorway services until half-way to Perth - so an unscheduled half-hour tour round Dunfirmline led to a dilapidated Jet garage which only had 2 working pumps and a long queue of vehicles. After a full tank, the mild engine coughing and spluttering had turned to a serious case of vehicle TB - it's quite disconcerting when, foot on the floorboards, there's massive backfire whilst you are in the motorway slow lane doing 30 with some bloke in a van doing 70 bearing down on your arse.

Disconcerting say I. Downright dangerous say most. However, there was skiing to do so we pressed on.

3 hours later, we were at Aviemore, where we drooped the house Legal Department off to do a walk around Rothiemurcus woods. That's when the fun started, the car struggling to make it uphill from Glenmore Lodge, 100metres at a time between huge backfires, exhaust clouds and engine conk-outs. It got windy, the blue skies of our morning's travels turned into an icy cairngorm wind and clouds closed in on the tops. I tried to summon up a Monkey! cloud by blowing on my hands but alas 1970s japanese tv shows didnt seem to change the reality of the situation: my £166 car is a bag o'shite!

Eventually, after a couple of long stops, oil checks, shouting, swearing and kicking of wheels, we arrived at the full ski centre car park, though there was a steady stram of traffic coming down.

It was about half-two, it had taken us 5 hours to do the 100 mile journey - but at least we were kitted out and raring to get on the slopes - I was desperately trying not to think of the lift pass costs, when a bloke gave me 2 passes "Here - have these - it's fooking shite up there!" (insert Inverness accent) - so we got on the controversial train and headed up into good old fashioned Scottish skiing conditions: ice bits fresh from the plateau , carried by gale force winds right into your face. Personal Service. Ace.

We did a couple of ridiculous runs - wind, snow, ice and gloom before the clever-wish-I'd-thought-of-it-sooner plan:let's get the flock out of here and head somewhere sheltered. The runs lower down were considerably more pleasant - you could see more than a metre and could hear people beyond the wind howl around your gore-tex hood and the constant chatter of multiple personalities somewhere in the sub-consious. However, just as we were getting into the telemark-sving of things, the management in their infinite let's keep the customers happy sort of style , suddenly closed all the lifts for no apparent reason and everyone was forced down despite the complaints, arguments ang general ill-feeling (* there must be some sort of economic model based on having a limited customer base of gullible scumbags such as myself). So that was it, 5 hours up, 3 hours back (car seemed to go better downhill) - just for 2 runs in a whiteout, 3 lower down and two trips up a t bar.

Skiing next weekend anyone?

Woke up this morning after a long broke-in-January thing to do (watching telly all night) - complete with eye and brain ache... took a look at the ski conditions on winterhighland.com and made a snap decision to get up to Glencoe. The drive along the M9 to Stirling was inspiring - with sun shining off the snow on the Ochills, Ben Ledi, Vorlich etc. Of course, the weather had turned by the time I'd back-fired and stuttered myself to Crianlairich - and all the usual sights like Ben More, Ben Lui and Ben Dorain were lost in the cloud. Half of Scotland it seemed had been better organised tham me and got their arses up to Glencoe in good time - the carpark which usually has tumbleweed and ptarmigan ghosts caressing its dusty wastes was jam packed - so that every passing place along the access road was full too. Road and car park rage led to lift queue rage - I dont think I've ever seen so many folk in a Scottish ski centre - it was like Easter in Norway and French half term combined - and stuffed into Glencoe's creaking centre. Still - it's a thousand times better than watching telly all day, hoovering or doing the self assesmnet tax form. The turns all came back - which felt ace - despite the blizzard and zero visibility. I'd only managed 3 short runs on the middle section - each with about a 20 minute wait at the t bar or the rickety old one man lift - I was witness to the day's bizzare happening when some boarder got hung up by his rucksack - they stopped the lift, leaving him hanging for a while before he unclipped the sack and got down by standing on his mates shoulders...that old chair caught me out once when I fell onto the emergency stop button - in front of an impatient lift queue of short tempered Weegies - the hung up boarder escaped lightly with a cheesy grin!

The last hour was ace - the conditions improved - you could SEE! It was the usual inspiring end of day trip - got down from the top the centre to the car park with two wipe outs - one a wendy version was just me being crap - the second was ace - did the Haggis Trap jump at full speed and landed on my arse - which is an improvement on last time I went to Glencoe and wimped out.

So the winter has arrived... hope to get back up to the snow again as soon as possible. I spent the journey home backfiring and stuttering and dreaming of fresh new trips - hopefully some proper backcountry and not piste posing!

OK so global warming has made the Scottish winters grey, wet and depressing - spare a thought for our poor Nordic cousins the other side of the North Sea - they have less daylight hours than us for longer during the winters - and the only thing preventing them from copying their cute rodent friends, the lemmings and finding a large cliff to jump off, is the presence of snow - makes everything so much lighter and truly uplifting. Also good to ski on.

So I was over in Oslo last weekend for the first time in 2 years - supposedly selling Walkabout trips to the norskies by wandering around the reiseliv2007 trade fair dressed in a kilt - which made the commute from Lier to Lillestrom through grey, rainy, miserable Oslo slightly odd. However when I came out of the hall a few hours later, 10cms of snow had fallen...

So a slighty madcap scheme was hatched which involved paying a visit to Steinar up in Hallingdal and persuading Rune (who looked like he needed sunshine, snow, exercise anyway) to drive. Of course, by managing to visit Erik and Stine in Asker and Line in Lier all in the space of a few days, it did turn out to be quite a mad trip. I dont think Rune was quite impressed with my "oh its only a few hours" speech when in fact it took us nearly 5 - but then we did stop for "polse" - norwegian hot dogs on the way

It was ace - and I managed to make film too....

Droooper trip New Year 06/07...
the drinking, poker games and take over of DJ Purple Haze's dancefloor was legendary. The weather was not. Braemar is supposed to be the most snow-sure spot in Scotland, it even has a shop selling telemark skis and yet we were force to endure 6 days of rain, mountain biking wipeouts and dodgy walks up Aberdeenshire hills into hurricane force sleet storms...

having said that, the great tradition of rained off winter trips is that it always gets good just as you're heading back to the office/fertility clinic/meeting with probation officer etc. This new year was no exception and the 2nd Jan dawned bright and sunny with a distinct covering of white stuff above the 600m contour line.

So after taking the vast supply of bottles to the recycling, tying bikes, skis, cows, goats, chickens etc. to the car, searching the village for missing car keys, untying aforementioned items, hiring HM customs and excise to take car apart, finding keys in coolbox, retying aforementioned items to the car, we were ready.

Glenshee was ace - covered in about 2cm of fresh snow on top of an almost frozen turn n' gravel base. The team consisted of the usual suspects - Nobby and Al on "old" slalom skis, me on Steinar sin blåski and Lindsay on the short red Tuas. Carn Asoda looked gorgously white and majestic (it usually looks like a big messy gravel strewn ski centre) above the centre - we all purposely strode carrying our skis for about 5 minutes - until it dawned on the crew that at least one of the team is an overweight undersexed illegitimate son of a travelling teatowel salesman. At that point, we all headed back down the green* run we had previously been staggering up to the nursery slope/kids sledge run where Nobby built a jump and got some big hair, Al made another film (see below) and got his ski legs back and Lindsay and I snowplowed our way into oblivion. Ski ee-aw.com returns!