It’s not easy to be a meteorologist. I normally check several different forecasts and try to figure out who is right, and today I’m finally convinced that when we have high pressure with clear skies, FMI (Finnish) gets it right. Their forecast said it would be almost -20°C, while both Yr (Norwegian) and SMHI (Swedish) claimed it’s more like -10, and it’s been the same story all winter.
I was going to ski up on Flåten, and as it’s not as cold on the mountain as it is in the valley, I figured it would be ok even if FMI had it right (because the forecast was for the valley, not mountain). As it turned out, they did get it right, but it was just as cold up at Högsta Hållan when I parked my car! Yikes. I abandoned my Plan A (which was to follow the trail to Tänndalen, then go up towards Malmbäckstugan and back to Hållan and shoot the sunset), I didn’t have enough clothes for -19°C! So I decided to go straight up towards Skarvruet, I was sure I could get a couple of pictures up there before my fingers would freeze. It would be short trip, but the landscape looked absolutely wonderful so I had to try.
Going up in the soft snow was hard work and by the time I was at the foot of Skarvruet, I was actually sweating. So much for the cold weather then. The views were great anywhere I looked, so I got more than a couple of pictures. There was fog (not sure if it’s fog or ice crystals from the snow cannons in Tänndalen?) in the valley, which was getting thicker the further west I got. The upside was that I got treated to a really nice halo around the sun.
Another thing that happened the higher I got, was the wind. It was surprisingly hard, and really biting. Hard to say how cold it was in temperatures, around -15 I guess, but add the windchill factor and I didn’t want to stick around for sunset. So I just glided back to my car, happy – the trip may have been much shorter than planned, but it was also so much better!
