On Sunday after a long week of cuts, bumps and bruises my brain decided that the best course of action was to get of my butt and go skiing in the -36 degree weather up in Longyearbreen glacier. Having only ever been alpine skiing before I was a little nervous though as Stu reminded me, “at least I had been skiing before!” One of our flat mates, Martin, had decided early on that it was his goal to take us skiing and readily agreed to take us as we assured him that it would most likely be a good source of entertainment for a few hours.
UNIS has a lot of student equipment that is loaned out or can be borrowed. The skiing equipment (skis, poles and boots) are located in Barrack 11 where Andrew and Frances live so we collected a set each and stood outside trying not to fall over as we put them on for the first time. It all started out good only falling over once and, just about being able to get myself back up again. After we got Stu’s skis sorted and refitted we headed out towards Longyearbreen.
There are some major differences between alpine skis and Nordic skis the main one being the boot attachments. On alpine skis your boot is firmly secured at the front and back with a safety catch which releases the skis when you fall over with your feet at a weird angle. Nordic skis, however, are only attached at the front of the boot so that your heel is free to easily move up and down as you “walk”. They also do not (and I mean do not) release when you fall over, leaving you with a long thin piece of metal attached to your foot, most of the time at a strange angle and wedged in the snow, when you fall over.
In hindsight the walk up to the glacier was not that bad. We had to walk to the side of the path at random intervals to let large groups of scooters go past and the few bumps in the relatively flat terrain before the glacial valley path left you a bit wobbly but all in all walking with Nordic skis was a relatively easy process once you realised that you could lift your heal and push forward instead of lifting the whole ski. The wind picked up in a small section of the valley prompting the use of my ski mash, however, the outside of it froze and it very quickly became more decoration for the top of my head than eye protection. Towards the top of the path the gradient increased substantially and martin showed us how to “efficiently” climb up without slipping backwards down again. This involves a strange v shaped walk where you lift the ski each time and almost walk on the inside of your feet, which became painful and exhausting after a time. Reaching the top of the path we could see the glacier open up in front of us and although it was around 1430 the sky was a bright blue.
After we had stopped for a bit to take pictures, have a drink, relax our muscles, and get our feet out of our skis, we started to head back down.
Along the top of the glacier the gradient was relatively smooth and I only fell over once easily getting myself up again after a short time laughing about it on the freezing ground. This laughter was short lived, however, as the gradient increased as did the rate of falls and on perhaps my third fall on a rather solid bit of ground it was gone (cue dramatic music!). I had managed to lose my balance while going too fast, and when I say too fast I mean only slightly faster than a jog. I fell straight down on the base of my spine which caused a shock to go up my back setting off the pain from a previous injury which has never managed to fully go away. I lay still in the snow with tears freezing to my face as Martin and Stu attempted to get me up with as little distress as possible. The rest of the way down was riddled with falls and tumbles, getting legs trapped as the skis dug themselves into snow drifts, arms and wrists jarred as we tried to save or right ourselves using the poles and restricted pain free movement of my legs as my body reminded me it was all connected together (albeit tenuously). At one point I removed my skis and walked down a small section of the slope putting them back on when the gradient eased out. The rest of the way down was done with caution attempting to turn and zigzag across the slope to slow the decent. This, however, lead to the challenge of turning which, when wearing skis almost a foot taller than me and incredibly thin is not as easy as it sounds. We got back to the Barracks in good time with only moderate exhaustion and a fair amount of pain.
Bring on a week of Aurora field work up at KHO.
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