Thursday, 18 December 2008

trip to Skogar and southern Iceland

2 weeks ago Anna and I went for a day trip to southern Iceland. I was taking a look at my glacier at Solheimajøkull. on our way we stopped by some of the waterfalls at Skogar. even during winter time they look impressive.
the weather was quite bad most of the way, luckily not that bad at the waterfalls and the glacier.

i put some more on my pictures.

Wednesday, 17 December 2008

12.12.12 på Hviids vinstue 2008


last weekend i went to copenhagen, denmark to attend to the annual 12.12.12 at Hviids vinstue. it's a long tradition among former sirius men to meet up here and have some fine julegløg and beer, telling true and not so true stories about the time "i was in the patrol" and just being social. a lot of people other than sirius, with a conection to Greenland also meet up. the bar is completely stuffed and people hang out here for many hours...
i came to Denmark on Thursday evening and went back to Iceland Sunday after having a splendid week end with a lot of good friends.

Tuesday, 25 November 2008

Fjallamennska 1 to Skardsheidi 21-23 nov

i getting to slow with my blog now, guess i'm not in greenland anymore where i have a lot of spare time ;0)

this week-end anna and i went with the rescue team to skardsheidi. it's a mountain ara just one hours drive north of reykjavik.
friday evening we walked for a couple of hours with our back-packs. they were around 20 kg so a bit heavy. after finding a suitable flat place to put up our tents we spent quite a time trying to break rocks free so we could put them on our tents, and they had to be big enough. but they were not! so most of the night during a raging storm i had to go out and put more rocks on and fix strings from the tent that broke all the time. not much sleep...
saturday morning we had to post pone the lectures due to a lot of wind, finally we could get our things together, pulled the rods out of the tent and put a lot of wait on them so that they wouldn't fly away.

then we walked in ropes up to a mountain where we spent the rest of the day trying out breaking techniques with ice axe and crampons, building and testing snow anchors and walking up, what i would call a really steep hill and down on the other side ( i'm afraid of hights).
at the end of the day we trained with avalanche beacons. most of the day it was only windy and a great view of the surrounding mountains and the valley. but the last couple of hours it started raining so everything from underwear to boots were soaking in water. not good.
after putting the tent up again and gettig some even bigger rocks we fired up the stove and had a nice freeze dried meal. in my tent anna and 2 other girls were staying.
during the night it was snowing and raining but luckily we didn't have to go out and fix anything.
the next morning the sleeping bags were quite wet and all our clothes were now frozen due to frost during the night. ICELANDIC WEATHER!!!

sunday it was planned Skeissuhorn a huge and to me difficult and steep mountain. on my way up there i really didn't feel comfortable due to the steepness and the altitude...
at the point of no return i decided to trun around and head back to camp. anna joined me!
we arrived at the camp at hours 1415 but the others had some problems so the first ones where back at 2030 and the last ones around 2230. we where back in town around 0030 but then we had to clean the cars and the equippment.
after finding a dirty hamburger with fries and coke i got to bed around 0330...

i put out some more pictures for you to watch.

Thursday, 13 November 2008

well well

Anna didn't go to Vifilfell as i told you on my blog. it was decided to go to mount Esja instead. she was back home around 0130 and had to wake up at 0630 to go working, counting cars for 3 hours.
i went to school today to read and write some. then i went to "BECO" with my camera. it needed cleaning after more than 3 years in the greenlandic dust and snow environment...

then we went to a couple of stores to get anna a back-pack. we got a really nice one, 60 litres at a good price, specially designed for women. so now she can carry then tent instad of me ;0)

i'm getting better and it's nice to be able to walk around again :0)
have a nice evening.

Wednesday, 12 November 2008

sick again...


the last 3 days i have been sick with the influenca. someone in school must have given it to me...

well, now i'm getting better and that is soo good, since i'm really getting tired of being sick. it messes up all my plans in school and everything else.

this evening/night the rescue team was going to mount Vifilsfell just outside reykjavik. it was better for me to stay home and get well than going for a stroll on a mountain in sleeth and rain...the red line is the road and the green is the walking path.
on friday my friend kari from svalbard and her boyfriend is coming to visit my on their way back from new york. the will stay here for the week-end and we will do some icelandic things... riding a horse, visiting the blue lagoon, watching some geysirs, eating mouton head etc...

some really good links to short films of iceland

http://www.pegasus.is/popup.jsp?FileName=http://www.pegasus.is/media/movies/reelwinter06.mov

http://www.pegasus.is/popup.jsp?FileName=http://www.pegasus.is/media/movies/Location_demo_new.mov

http://www.lux.is/lux/english/images/movies/Luxnet.mov

the movies are made by an icelandic company "Pegasus Pan Arctica"