I have been having abstinences since I got back from Argentina. It is no fun walking around in the city, working out and waiting for the first snow. Your mind tends to drift away to places you have been to and places you dream about going to to do what you love the most; skiing.

Last week, when the itch got too much to scratch, I went up to Lillehammer (´94 Winter Olympics city) to hang with my friends from Field Productions. Here they had set up a couple of rails and in-runs. We got snow from the Zamboni cruising the ice-rink close by. The feeling of just clicking my boots into the bindings left me wanting even more. Back in Oslo, I started searching for snow in Norway on snow-forecast.com.

It didn’t take long for me to decide that I wanted to go to Oppdal. The forecast stated a heavy snowfall, about 52cm the next 6 days, and cold weather the coming week. Additionally, one of the lifts was going to open. I started to do some lobbying among my friends, opting them to come with me. But it wasn´t too easy I can tell you. Especially when it is a 6-hour drive on narrow and slippery roads. That was until I told about the forecast for Oppdal. Even though we are surrounded by asphalt in Oslo, there are many powder hungry dogs here.

Finally, my friend Jørgen accepted the invitation. But Jørgen works a lot and hadn´t had the time to change the tires on his car. Late Friday afternoon we found ourselves trying to change the tires. It wasn’t as easy as it should. The bolts were stuck and we needed power-tools to un-tighten them. After being laughed at by some girls at a gas station, Jørgen remembered he could call his brother who had what we needed. 2 hours behind schedule, we were at last on our way to what turned out to be one of the best weekends I have ever experienced.

We stepped up on Hans Gunleiksrud´s front porch a little after 2 am. He was a sleep, and as the snow kept dumping on us, we didn’t mind waking him up either. Still, we didn’t have the greatest expectations. The snow up in the mountain would probably be bottomless, ruining our skis, and we would have to limit ourselves to stay in-piste. But at the same time we were extremely happy just to see it snow again, and that we would be clicking-in in the morning.

As we approached the resort, we couldn’t believe our own eyes. At the bottom we met Hans again smiling form ear to ear. He had been ripping lines through the forest as soon as the lifts had opened. Super excited and filled with anticipation we got in line to get our lift passes. But that wasn’t needed. The resort manager announced they didn’t have the capacity to manage the increasing cue at the ticket-office, so he just let everybody ski for free that day.

Unbelievable! It was like skiing in mid February! It was cold, the snow was knee-deep and light – we just kept smiling and shouting our way down the forest. We did 80´s turns, jumped, tossed ourselves out of small ridges and got continuously snow in our faces! And suddenly everybody was there! Fellow team-mates Per Mundhjel, Tor Eivind Lindestad and Jon Anders Lindestad and other friends joined in on the snow feast. The best times are with friends, right? The lift didn’t take us very high, but we were like Duracell-rabbits, doing multiple laps down the forest. I think we calculated that we skied 4000 vertical meters that day – on a single T-bar lift that took us half way up…

A commendatory celebration was of course in hand after such a playful day. It had its consequences. Positive ones I may add. It had snowed the whole night too. We woke up to bluebird and 20 new centimetres of white gold. Still, this day was little bit slower though. We could feel the previous day in our burning thighs. It was just overwhelming being able to play so much in the snow as we did.

Leaving Oppdal was hard. It is still snowing up there. But we know now for sure that the winter has arrived in Norway too. And hopefully we wont have to wait much longer to fool around in the snow again.

Thank you for letting me share!

- Pedro