Last day of the long weekend. I was out before sunrise, walked up Furuberget again. That’s 3.5 times in 3 days… other people normally take the lift up… Anyway, I observed that the snow has melted away from the trees on the high hills, for example the tall pines on the Eagle Mountain are now bare. Strange… there hasn’t been any wind to speak of and it sure hasn’t been warm. Must be the sun shining on these trees all day. Then in the afternoon I went skiing again, and for the first time I had the camera with me (on skis, that is, obviously!). I wanted to check if there’s any sunset photo ops now that the forest has been cleared south-west of the tracks so there’s a clean view, with three tall pines in the middle of the clearing to provide foreground interest. When I was halfway the ski round, I met a local and as is the custom here, we exchanged a few words. Only it was more than just a few words, we talked about Los and the nature and skiing and I explained that I’m a bit less than gracious on skis since I only picked up the sport recently, but at least I have stayed on my feet so far. He consoled me by saying that he has a relative who has lived in England and South Africa and he usually ends wrapped around a lamp post when he tries to ski here. The conversation went on to the point where I was worried that I might actually miss the sunset, but, standing still in the cold air gets to you so we parted ways before the freeze set in. So I made it to my sunset spot just in time and struggled with the tripod because one of the sections had frozen so I couldn’t fully extend the foot. Just as well for the uneven ground so I could place the short foot higher than the two others and thus had a steady platform to shoot from. It turned out that I had been a bit too cautious in my estimate about the spot – it was just perfect, as the sun was setting right behind those tall pines (or right next to them, if you took a few steps in either way). Nice.

I watched the sun disappear behind the hills and started back. There’s a forest trail that I can take from my house to the ski tracks so I don’t always have to drive to the ”official” starting point of the tracks. My sunset spot is only about 100 metres clockwise from the forest trail, so I had to ski in the reverse direction to get back to the trail. No big deal, you say, and so I thought, too… But there’s a reason people prefer to ski clockwise on the tracks. The downhills are nicer that way. And as it happens, the 100 metres that I had to ski anti-clockwise in order to get to the forest trail includes a fairly steep slope. That bends in the middle. And what do you know, I can’t turn in full speed! So I had a close encounter with a lamp post and crashed in the soft snow. Once I was on my feet again and looked at the tracks of my crash landing, I couldn’t help but laugh. I had to go and brag about having stood on my feet since I took up skiing?! Should’ve knocked on wood, LOL!