skier 87

THE SNOW SIFTS DOWN AND WE SIFT THROUGH IT. A dense curtain of tum-bling fl akes pile up quickly on every bodily surface if you pause long enough to catch your breath, which we do often—though with some trepidation. When the snow is this light and deep at tiny Hodlekve ski area in Norway’s Sogndal region you need to keep moving lest some other group of Vikings dart suddenly from the woods to plunder your hard-won line. Right now, however, when the goods are very good indeed, there appears to be no one around. ¶ Such stellar condi-tions aren’t exactly what we’d expected so close to the notoriously stormy West Coast, a place of generally fl uctuating freezing levels and malevolent, often porridge-like precipitation. But Europe’s miss-ing snow had to go somewhere this season, and Scandinavia was where it was falling, particularly the mountains of Norway, frontline defence to marauding North Atlantic storms. The several metres of bounty we’ve discovered at Hodlekve are well-preserved because you have to walk a fair distance to reach them. In fact, you have to walk to most of the runs here, an instant and unexpected charm for

a Lilliputian hill served by only a single, long platter lift. But the forest we descend through is open and inviting, steepening as we contour further around the slope away from the ski area. We’re more than surprised; there are chutes and gullies, massive pillows and plenty of big hardwood trees. It’s a lot like Japan. ¶ Our forest mission turns into a several-hour tour during which time it never once stops snowing. By the time we work our way down to the band of highway bisecting a snow-choked mountain pass, darkness has settled into the valley like a charcoal fog. Here, the isolation we’ve enjoyed all afternoon evaporates as we converge with other tracks that exit everywhere from the woods like revealed secrets. Our pervious paranoia seems well-founded, as a handful of dedicated skiers we’ve neither seen nor heard in the shroud of the storm mill atop the three-metre ledge of snowplow debris, all chattering about the transformative nature of their descent. The ski area manager waits on the blacktop in his pickup truck with an “I told you so” smile to drive us the half-hour back to Hodlekve. He doesn’t need to ask how it was.

Along Norwa‡’s wild wesł coasł youll ƒind

and plenł‡ oƒ łradiłion.long ƒjords, big snow, small ski areas, ƒew people,

86 skier

Åsmund Thorsen and Erik Finseth in the Summøre Alps in Stranda, Norway.

skier 87

THE SNOW SIFTS DOWN AND WE SIFT THROUGH IT. A dense curtain of tum-bling fl akes pile up quickly on every bodily surface if you pause long enough to catch your breath, which we do often—though with some trepidation. When the snow is this light and deep at tiny Hodlekve ski area in Norway’s Sogndal region you need to keep moving lest some other group of Vikings dart suddenly from the woods to plunder your hard-won line. Right now, however, when the goods are very good indeed, there appears to be no one around. ¶ Such stellar condi-tions aren’t exactly what we’d expected so close to the notoriously stormy West Coast, a place of generally fl uctuating freezing levels and malevolent, often porridge-like precipitation. But Europe’s miss-ing snow had to go somewhere this season, and Scandinavia was where it was falling, particularly the mountains of Norway, frontline defence to marauding North Atlantic storms. The several metres of bounty we’ve discovered at Hodlekve are well-preserved because you have to walk a fair distance to reach them. In fact, you have to walk to most of the runs here, an instant and unexpected charm for

a Lilliputian hill served by only a single, long platter lift. But the forest we descend through is open and inviting, steepening as we contour further around the slope away from the ski area. We’re more than surprised; there are chutes and gullies, massive pillows and plenty of big hardwood trees. It’s a lot like Japan. ¶ Our forest mission turns into a several-hour tour during which time it never once stops snowing. By the time we work our way down to the band of highway bisecting a snow-choked mountain pass, darkness has settled into the valley like a charcoal fog. Here, the isolation we’ve enjoyed all afternoon evaporates as we converge with other tracks that exit everywhere from the woods like revealed secrets. Our pervious paranoia seems well-founded, as a handful of dedicated skiers we’ve neither seen nor heard in the shroud of the storm mill atop the three-metre ledge of snowplow debris, all chattering about the transformative nature of their descent. The ski area manager waits on the blacktop in his pickup truck with an “I told you so” smile to drive us the half-hour back to Hodlekve. He doesn’t need to ask how it was.

Along Norwa‡’s wild wesł coasł youll ƒind

and plenł‡ oƒ łradiłion.long ƒjords, big snow, small ski areas, ƒew people,

88 skier

As beƒiłs łradiłion and repułałion, łhe Norwegiansseł łhe bar ƒor łhe hardesł-working pros ouł łhere;

ƒocus is absolułe and indulgence oułside of adinnerłime beer rare unłil łhe job is done.

WE’D ARRIVED IN SOGNDAL VERY LATE AFTER A FULL DAY OF TRAVEL from North America and a six-hour drive from Bergen that

twisted around cold fjords in dark valleys we could barely see out of. Myself, plus Mike Douglas and Ben Mullin of Salomon Freeski TV, had rendezvoused at a gas station on the edge of town with the crew from Field Productions—Norwegian director Filip Chris-tensen, skiers Åsmund Thorsen and Eirik Finseth, and Swedish photo legend Mattias Fredriksson—and headed inland to the town of Gaupne, installing ourselves in a clutch of fi nely crafted log cabins for the night. ¶ Along the way snowbanks had towered over our vehicle, testament to the veracity of Internet chatter over the very big winter Scandinavia was hav-ing. On cue, in the morning it was snowing hard, and we’d headed to Hodlekve, reveling in the familiarity of swirling fl akes in an unfamiliar land. Like most fi lm teams on the clock, we’d gone straight to work, resulting in the halting forest descent. But we weren’t the only ones—with the continent still ultra-dry, the Twitter feed was alive with the buzz of European fi lm and photo crews scrambling up and down Norway’s spine similarly banking storm footage while sussing out places to shoot if and when the sun came out.

¶ Which it does next day. Along with some fairly pernicious cold of the -20 C variety. Enak Gavaggio joins us from France and we strike out to contour to the right of the previous day’s descent to work our way down over pu� ball pillows, horizontal trunks and padded rockfalls, the skiers making soft and certain landings. On this day we again remain in the forest’s creeping shadows until sunset, fi ghting hard against bitter cold. ¶ As befi ts tradition and reputation, the Norwegians set the bar for the hardest-working pros out there; focus is absolute and indulgence outside of a dinnertime beer rare until the job is done. Home-grown talent and the Lutheran work ethic fi gure into the canon of infl uences for Christensen, inspired at age 16 to pick up a camera and fi lm his ski buddies on their home hill outside Oslo by countryman Henrik Rostrup (Scanners, Teddy Bear Crisis). With seven feature-length ski fi lms under his belt since starting Field Productions in 2002, Christensen, at the ten-der age of 23, has acquired the prestige to marshal bodies and get things done—though with the utmost humility and passion for a sport that is clearly in his blood. This Norwegian paean to the blue-collar soul skier is nothing new, a story that Douglas and crew will have no problem fashioning an episode around.

The boys travelling in style back to the lift after shredding the Hodlekve backcountry.

skier 89

SKIING FOR UTILITARIAN PURPOSES OF TRANSPORT, HUNTING AND WARFARE go back 4,000 years in Norway, but when

Morgedal farmer Sondre Norheim created a more secure binding in 1850 that made recreational skiing easier, it also led to the fi rst “freestyle” jump-ing competitions in his home county of Telemark. To start, both the drop-knee Telemark and then the uphill-swinging Christiania turns invented by Norheim and his buddies allowed better control. These techniques were then aided by Norheim’s addition of sidecut to his skis, garnering national fame and cementing his place in the pantheon of style. “He stood on his skis down the steepest valley inclines and on mountainsides with the maxi-mum of stability. He made graceful turns around bushes and trees, and was really an artist on skis,” a reporter intoned at the time. ¶ Thus, today in Norway you are surrounded by artists dutifully schooled in various—often all—of the snowsliding arts. As we are on this particular Sunday. Weekends at local areas like Hodlekve are packed. You don’t ask the kids if they want to go to the hill—you just take them because that’s where all their friends are going to be anyway. Skiing, to mine a cliché in the best possible way, is not sport in Norway, but a way of life. And we’ve found ourselves in a valley rooted deeply in both this ethos and Norwegian history. ¶ People have lived in pastoral Sogndal since 700 BC. In 1917, a local farmer plowed up the famous Eggja Stone, a grave marker with some 200 runic inscriptions important to the history of the Old Norse language (Sogndal itself translates as “valley of the river that fi nds its way to the fjord”). There are still ties to this linguistic past, as locals speak a special dialect known as sognamål. These days, with more than 2,000 university students in a town of 7,000, Sogndal is an educational centre, creating an unusual level of energy and activity for a place this small. The university doesn’t o� er programs all that di� erent from elsewhere, but people choose Sogndal for the skiing and outdoor lifestyle—which is saying something in a country where outdoor lifestyle is already king. They’re also quite knowledgeable in the ways of global outdoor culture; in Hodlekve’s parking lot a random skier calls out Douglas for GNAR points. ¶ “I can’t be-lieve you’re a pro and I’m not,” he laughs in a thick accent, poking Douglas hard in the chest.Mike Douglas descends into Fjaerland.

90 skier

Eirik Finseth playing some mini golf in Sogndal, Norway.

skier 91

Weekends ał local areas likeHodlekve are packed. You donł ask You donł ask łhe kids iƒ łhey wanłło go ło łhe hill—you jusł łake łhembecause łhałs where all łheir ƒriends aregogog ig igoiogog igog nini gngn łg łg ołoł bebeb anana ya yanynana yana wayy yyw ywywy yywy ayawaw ywaw .

DOUGLAS LAUGHS OFF SUCH INDIGNITIES, in part because they’re playful, but also because he likes the fact that many still identify him as a

professional skier, despite The Godfather having backed away somewhat from snow-hero in recent years. The demands of family life with two young children, consulting jobs with both Salomon and Whistler Blackcomb, and his latest personal makeover and pet project, that of creator and executive producer—not to mention frequent direc-tor, cameraman, and subject—of the wildly successful web-based Salomon Freeski TV have seen to that. ¶ By the time you read this, SFTV will be some 75 episodes deep and into its fi fth season. Despite the lofty post a� orded by being inventor of both the world-changing twin-tip ski and the fi rst bona fi de ski-webisode series (both widely and poorly copied), Douglas remains ever humble and low-key. Only once or twice a day does he become obnoxiously chatty about camera, fi lming and editing tech, views for the latest episode, or the par-ticulars of an upcoming project. All of which has its own charm as the hallmark of someone in genuine thrall with what they’re doing, and keen to learn everything about its many facets. It shows in results. Salomon webisodes

are consistently cutting edge and well-executed, even when athlete-based—a feat unto itself. An increasingly story-driven approach has also made them some of the most eagerly anticipated action sport content on the web, with average hits of 300,000 each. ¶ Switchback Entertainment, the Whistler-based company Douglas started out of necessity to produce the Salomon series, has itself branched out into everything from killing it on the mountain-fi lm festival circuit with compelling shorts likeThe Freedom Chair (the Josh Dueck story) to promos for his home mountain (last winter’s smash web hit Whistler Blackcomb XXS) and the World Ski & Snowboard Festival 72-hour Filmmaker Showdown fi nalist LiKE, a high-tech rom-com skewering the dystopia of the very social media in which Douglas has also become a profi cient and prolifi c participant. ¶ In the fi eld, he’s both taskmaster and workhorse, leading by example and never asking more than he’s willing to give. On the Norway mission, this is a superhuman combination of travel planner, writer, director, cameraman and star willing to keep at it on a rare sunny North Atlantic day even after twilight has turned a cold day positively frigid. As a result everyone is working extra hard. Me? I’m just freezing.

ggg

The town of Sogndal, Norway with the famous Sognefjord in the background.

92 skier

the wind never fi nds its way in here. A beautifully crafted lodge with fl oor-to-ceiling glass catches what sun might wander down the valley to illuminate family lunches. There’s a few more pistes here than Hodlekve, the skiable terrain more obvious, but it still contains an unapologetically high quotient of walk-to runs. Hafslo also features the longest ski lift in Norway—a two-kilometre a� air that rises 551 metres above the base. From the top we drop down an amazingly maintained Super G piste of 2,600 metres. The snow is Styrofoam perfect. Skier’s left is a wide forested gully in which, amazingly, the weekend crowd has left some good snow. It’s deep and speedy, the Kootenay-style openings that keep ap-pearing in the evergreen glades drawing us down. ¶ A short walk and half-hour traverse from the ski area across more fl at-topped, wind-whacked alpine and we’re into cli� bands. South-facing, somewhat worked, they lead to picture-perfect pillow lines in the forest. The runout is onto a fl at area of old cabins, still untracked and good for a few wiggles. Next cycle through here the group splits; the pros are fi ne hucking marginal launches onto marginal landings for the cameras, so I go exploring. Before long I’m cli� ed out, hiking and crawling 40 minutes through waist-deep snow to escape via a ramp that leads down a cleft in the cli� . Here I have to drop two metres onto the top of a fl at rock that, unattached to the cli� , leaves a gap that has to be cleared. Calculating, I leap fi rst onto the rock then immediately o� it, rocketing into the forest. Guerilla skiing at its fi nest, the kind you imagine few would attempt. Here, however, there are tracks everywhere. ¶ In the afternoon we drive across a pass to another fjord, glaciers hemming the mountains on either side. The Norwegians lead us up heinous hairpins to an abandoned asylum, which, depending on who you believe, may have housed tuberculosis patients or the insane. There’s an old rusty gondola—no longer in service—that at one time had been used to transport both live and dead bodies from a wharf up to the asylum. Today, fi ttingly, the building hosts skiers, though it’s one of the spookiest places any of us have ever been. High above the fl ux of maritime freezing levels, fjord shimmering below, the surrounding snow proves über deep. We tour above the asylum into a playground of cli� bands and other tasty features, eventually drawing eye level with massive iced waterfalls across the fjord. There’s nothing insane about skiing in Norway, and yet everything here seems truly crazy. ¶ The next day we drive up a side valley under the large Jostedal Glacier, parking at a road’s end pig farm. We tour fi rst across the valley on cross-country trails then up a steep, wooded fl ank, onto a spur that runs high into the stark and massive alpine. The slog over endless glistening rollers seems strangely familiar until I recognize it as the very touring I’d dream of when I fi rst started digging into old Norwegian ski literature. ¶ Up top the scope of terrain revealed is impressive; the Norwegians are as nonplussed as a sailor showing you their ocean. But the skiing is beyond amazing—deep, cold, fast. The low-angle rollers across the top are still hoot-’n-holler fun, and when these break over into a steep gully sided by hardwoods and full of pillows under which is entombed a tumbling river, it’s a rocket-ride through the trees back to our touring track. The full meal deal, Norway style.

THE VISTA ON MONDAY COULD INSTANTLY MAKE A SKIER FORGET days of obdurate skies and murky misery, especially in a place where such conditions are all

too frequent—if not the outright norm. ¶ In the thin light of a -30 C bluebird sunrise we stand on a snowy, windswept plateau above Heggmyrane Hafslo, 20 minutes in the opposite direction from Sogndal, peering into a vertiginous diorama. Every point of the compass features a mountainous jumble, mostly steep-sided a� airs with rounded or fl at tops separated by deep U-shaped val-leys. The valleys furthest west brim with intruding ocean, o� ering a virtual defi nition of fjord. Elsewhere tiny farms dot the bottomlands beside an occasional smear of trees. For the geologically inclined the topography reads like the last chapter of the Pleistocene saga, with punctuation o� ered by a few remnant icecaps and shark fi n spires that escaped the full glacial grind. Clear skies and several new feet of snow again seem a gift. After all, the view in Norway might be gorgeous, but the narrow weather windows it’s seen through open and shut with remarkable rapidity. ¶ Hafslo sits in a pass where roadside trees hold so much snow that it seems

Before long Im cliƒƒed ouł, hiking and crawling 40 minułesłhrough waisł-deep snow ło escape via a ramp łhałleads down a cleƒł in łhe cliƒƒ. Guerilla skiing ał iłs ƒinesł,łhe kind you imagine ƒew would ałłempł. Here, however,łhere are łracks everywhere.łłłhłłhłhł

yłrłrł

Åsmund Thorsen, happy to show Mike D and the boys just how good his home turf can be.

skier 93

How’s that for a natural vista? Even Sigstad in Stranda, Norway.

94 skier

SPEAKING OF MEALS, THESE HAVE BECOME FEW AND FAR BETWEEN.This part of Norway is so isolated and rural that little remains open once the sun goes down, the only source of late-night

food—gas stations—included. We’ve taken to cooking odd dinners from leftover snacks to get by, with a chocolate bar dessert. No one seems to mind. ¶ Next day is bluebird again but colder still. We sled above the plateau at Hodlekve but this time in the other direction, taking a short-cut to a mountain called Blåfjell. The wind has been at it overnight and fi lming is di� cult; some areas are blown clear of snow, others horribly loaded. In Norway the weather is always yang to the yin of the mountains’ enduring beauty. It’s a long morning of very short lines, and a few slabs

ripping out along the way—nothing too dangerous but enough to keep everyone on alert. All in a day’s work for the Norwegians, who continue to inspire Douglas. ¶ Contouring back to the ski area when we’re done is long and arduous, but we pass many groups touring over the fjells or lunching on rocks in the sun—entire families ranging from the youngest child to the oldest octogenarian, way out in the backcountry, a scene being replayed at each of the hundreds of similar small ski areas along the coast. The resourcefulness of Scandos never ceases to impress as one woman pulls a steaming wiener out of a long metal thermos to hand to her kids, then another... and another. Who’d have thought to keep hot dogs in a thermos? ¶ Well, ever-inventive Norwegians, of course.

| DNA | GENERAL: sognefjord.no, fjordnorway.com, jostedal.com + TRANSPORT: Whether driving from other parts of Scandinavia or Europe, or fl ying into Bergen and renting a vehicle, be

prepared for it to take a lot longer than you think to get anywhere. Most roads either twist around lengthy fjords or require a ferry-crossing (have Norwegian kroner on hand to pay). + ACCOM-

MODATION: Quality Hotel, Sogndal: qualityhotelsogndal.no, Sandvik Camping & Cabins, Gaupne: sandvikcamping.com/cabins + FOOD: Restaurants are few and far between, and stores aren’t

always open when you think they would/should be. Stock up when you can and always have an emergency food supply ready in case of a) no restaurant, b) no store, c) cancelled ferry or d)

being hopelessly lost. + SKIING: Hodlekve: hodlekve.no, Heggmyrane, Hafslo: sognskisenter.no, Norwegian Mountain Guide Bureau: norgesguidene.no/sogn

Åsmund Thorsen continues the evolution set in motion by his ancestors.

skier 87

THE SNOW SIFTS DOWN AND WE SIFT THROUGH IT. A dense curtain of tum-bling fl akes pile up quickly on every bodily surface if you pause long enough to catch your breath, which we do often—though with some trepidation. When the snow is this light and deep at tiny Hodlekve ski area in Norway’s Sogndal region you need to keep moving lest some other group of Vikings dart suddenly from the woods to plunder your hard-won line. Right now, however, when the goods are very good indeed, there appears to be no one around. ¶ Such stellar condi-tions aren’t exactly what we’d expected so close to the notoriously stormy West Coast, a place of generally fl uctuating freezing levels and malevolent, often porridge-like precipitation. But Europe’s miss-ing snow had to go somewhere this season, and Scandinavia was where it was falling, particularly the mountains of Norway, frontline defence to marauding North Atlantic storms. The several metres of bounty we’ve discovered at Hodlekve are well-preserved because you have to walk a fair distance to reach them. In fact, you have to walk to most of the runs here, an instant and unexpected charm for

a Lilliputian hill served by only a single, long platter lift. But the forest we descend through is open and inviting, steepening as we contour further around the slope away from the ski area. We’re more than surprised; there are chutes and gullies, massive pillows and plenty of big hardwood trees. It’s a lot like Japan. ¶ Our forest mission turns into a several-hour tour during which time it never once stops snowing. By the time we work our way down to the band of highway bisecting a snow-choked mountain pass, darkness has settled into the valley like a charcoal fog. Here, the isolation we’ve enjoyed all afternoon evaporates as we converge with other tracks that exit everywhere from the woods like revealed secrets. Our pervious paranoia seems well-founded, as a handful of dedicated skiers we’ve neither seen nor heard in the shroud of the storm mill atop the three-metre ledge of snowplow debris, all chattering about the transformative nature of their descent. The ski area manager waits on the blacktop in his pickup truck with an “I told you so” smile to drive us the half-hour back to Hodlekve. He doesn’t need to ask how it was.

Along Norwa‡’s wild wesł coasł youll ƒind

and plenł‡ oƒ łradiłion.long ƒjords, big snow, small ski areas, ƒew people,