Beautiful skating

Spotify

There's a new digital music service called spotify. The only link with skiing is that it's Swedish, but it's pretty cool. A basic account is free, with a few adds. Once you've installed the client, you can just search for music and listen.

More crust

Crust skating

After the bread's gone you've still got the crust! I got up early a couple days ago and went out over the fields near Oslo's water supply resevoir. We've been having daily highs in the 8-9 degree C range with bright sun. That melts the top layer of the snow. Then our cold, clear nights freeze that back up.

If you get on it before it remelts, you get to go zipping about wherever you want using skate technique (with skate skis and longer poles).
This video doesn't show crust skiing, just skating on trails, but you still get a good idea about it being pretty grueling exercise!

It seems like the Norwegians haven't figured out the crust skiing thing. They just stick on trails. Though one of them did slow down and gawk a bit when I was gliding over the fields next to a road he was driving on.

Maridalsvannet

Skied across Maridalsvannet, the lake near my apartment that supplies Oslo's world class drinking water. I'd been wanting to ski over it but never got around to it.
I decided today that it wasn't going to get better anytime before December and made my way over the crusty snow covered ice.
Nice weather today, although too warm. Looked just like the picture.

Skate skiing

Got me some skate skis now. No nasty and sticky klister, just glide wax! I've been practicing this technique with some old, too short for classic skis I already had. Works great in any snow except loose fresh stuff.
As luck would have it, we just got 10-15cm of that last night. But I'm not complaining: went out classic skiing yesterday evening. Tonight I'll see what the snow looks like and take the right skis accordingly.

Korsvoll Skole - Ullevålseter - Frognerseteren and back

The snow has come back! Where I live it's heavy, wet stuff but it's great higher up. Went today for my favorite little workout trip. I was the first one in Oslo today going uphill to Frognerseteren, so I had to cut new tracks. It snowed heavily the whole way up and back.
Those who'd taken the subway up there were starting to pass me coming the other way as I neared my destination. They were going for the almost all downhill trip back into Oslo by the Sognsvann lake. I came back the way I'd come up, by a bit steeper but less known route.
Wax has become super important now. Where in times past, you just put some blue extra on or green if it was really cold, these days the wrong wax will stop you dead in your tracks. You'll either get no grip making it impossible to go uphill or accumulate snow under your skis which will stop you just as well.
Today's trip took me through different climate zones and required different wax for each one. I started in birch, pine and poplar forest and ended up in pure pines. At the bottom I was slipping pretty bad but refused to put sticky red wax on because I knew that it would stop me in my tracks with under ski snow accumulation higher up. Was I ever glad to have supported a bit of slippage lower down when I got a couple hundred meters higher in elevation! I had to fight to keep my skis clear but never had to stop to scrape.

Klister

Difficult period in my life. Fingers are sticky with klister. Klister is nasty sticky glue applied to skis instead of kick wax for getting a grip on melting snow.

It's for trying to hold onto something going away.

As T.S. Eliot writes in "The Wasteland" :

Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow

Now I'll have to pick up the pieces of my life I dropped because of skiing.

Will have to make amends with abandoned friends, do some housework, wash other things than ski clothes and figure out how to still stay in the best shape of my life.

Korsvoll - Ullevålseter - Frognerseteren - Ullevålseter - Hammeren - Korsvoll

A pleasant moderate elevation gain-loss trip. There were still hoards of people out in spite of the light falling snow. Dog and sprogs, the whole mess. The trip from Ullevålseter to Frognerseteren was therefore surprisingly and mercifully empty.
It's funny what perception does. There's a steep drop on the trail not far from Frognerseteren. The first time I went down it in December I was surprised to be still standing (and alive!) when I came up the slope at the other end of it. This time what had been so foreboding in my brain was a bit of a disappointment. I actually poled off to get a little more downhill speed and did feel some g-forces as I came up the steep at the opposite end of the slope. Fun, going up a sizeable hill with no effort, but not that terrible, exciting and frightening thing that that drop had been in memory.
This trip clocks out at 21k making me an even 50k for the weekend. A bit lazy for me since I've done more than that in a day. But I have force in my legs again and must admit that I enjoyed the two short trips this weekend in spite of the crowds.