At school, we used to have a week’s holiday every winter. Translated from Finnish, a ”skiing holiday”. I stopped using it for skiing somewhere around my teens, but now it was finally time to resurrect that noble tradition. So I have a week’s holiday and will spend it at the cabin and go skiing every day.

My first trip was to Andersborg in Tänndalen to sample their waffles. I’ve had better, but the skiing was awesome. Epic glide – front, back and sideways. The tracks were pretty much frozen. And I couldn’t have asked for better weather for sure, blue skies and white snow!

Having done those 15 km of skiing already, in the evening I set out on skis again to shoot the moonlit sky. But those small clouds that were so nice during the day, were a bit more problematic now. For example, Orion was half covered. But I had to try, because there’s a risk that this is the last clear night of the week. [2012-03-05]

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I don’t know why, but even when I’m physically very tired, I sometimes have trouble sleeping. This was one of those nights, so I gave up even trying quite early in the morning and decided to upload yesterday’s pictures on the computer while waiting for sunrise. Slight problem though – I didn’t have a mini-USB cable! I thought I had taken a spare cable to the cabin last year, but it appears that I had also taken it back home which left me with no way of getting the pictures out of the camera. Oh well, the 4 GB memory card holds over 300 pictures and then I have a 1 GB card for emergencies. I’ll manage.

Later on I drove to Walles and picked up the snowmobile trail towards Ramundberget and then the Ösjöstugan waffle cabin. Very good waffles here, and this means that I’ve now eaten waffles at every waffle cabin in the region. Djupdalsvallen has the best ones, too bad they’re not open in the winter. On the other hand, most of the other ones are not open in the summer. Not even Ösjöstugan, which is a bit of a shame because it would be a nice hike from Walles along the Ösjöarna valley to the cabin. But if the colours are good this year then it’s worth doing regardless.

When I got back to Messlingen, I came across my neighbours. I took my chances and asked if they had a mini-USB cable they could borrow, and they did! Lovely. [2012-03-06]

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For the rest of the week, I will explore the local trails in Messlingen. My first effort was the trail leading towards the Fiskhålsgraven which according to the winter trail map would be prepared. Well, it sure wasn’t. Just a couple of snow mobiles that went that way a good while ago so at least I got some hard tracks to follow. When it got really steep, I had to take off the skis and walk. I was wondering if it was smart to continue up, but then again I had faith that these tracks were leading to more tracks which eventually would take me to an actual trail. I was right – and the real bonus was that the ”more tracks” took me right to the ravine! It was a bit risky though because now I was on the western side of the ravine which is lined with snow overhangs (I’m talking about a major snow pileup, it doesn’t melt away until well into summer). I made sure to stay on the right side of the birches that were growing on the edge, because I had a feeling that if I took just one step beyond them, I would be standing on empty. Just look at the top left quarter of the picture are you get what I mean by the overhang… [2012-03-07]