Gotta love these Easter breaks. 5 days off, it’s a mini-vacation! The only place to be during Easter is the mountains, so I drove to the cabin already on Wednesday evening. I’m glad I have the fireplace now… even though my neighbour had turned up the heat, it was still a bit chilly in the cabin. The nighttime temperatures drop down to -15 degrees centigrade which is very cold for late March. The weather forecast says that the daytime temperature is not above freezing either, but the sun makes it feel a whole lot warmer than that. And with this cold spell having lasted so long, it means that there’s a lot of snow left. Last year Easter was week later and the snow cover had broken up in many places, but there are no such problems now, and won’t be, a week from now.

Yesterday morning I drove to Funäsdalen. The cold night was evident along the road, with mountain birches covered in a thick layer of frost. I almost started worrying that I was under-dressed, but as long as you stay in the sun it’s not a problem. And I did have sun, plenty of it – my face is red after over-exposure, I completely forgot sunscreen! There was a lot of people out, as Easter is every cross-country skier’s favourite time of year. There were snow pits everywhere and almost all of them were occupied but I found one good one for myself to enjoy my lunch in the sunshine.

I rented skis, again, with the idea that this time I would buy the kit if the boots are ok. But would you believe… the left boot was chafing so I got a sore heel, although luckily not so bad as to become a blister. So no way would I buy these boots and I asked if they had a pair of those I rented the last time, but I was out of luck. They told me that the sports store in Bruksvallarna might have them so I’m going to go there tomorrow. I’ll buy if they have them and do a snowshoe trek if they don’t!