9 Months in Norway: ...a belated God Jul og Godt Nytt År!

Tyler and I spent a long, relaxing, week+ Christmas break at Hafjell, a ski area just north of Lillehammer where the slalom and giant slalom events were held during the '94 Winter Olympics. We got a great deal on a cabin halfway up the mountain, but only about 100ft from the slopes. It was a wonderful trip, but very different from our experiences skiing back in the states at places like Breckenridge and Keystone.

...sitting here trying to decided how to describe this...I'm just going to start over...

View from the train on the way up

It was super convenient to get to Hafjell. We hopped on our local bus to the train station and took a nice 2.5 hour train ride to Lillehammer. Honestly it felt like riding the Polar Express because of the amazing winter scenery and the unlimited free hot chocolate! And we had the whole cabin on our train (seating for 8) all to ourselves. Once we got to Lillehammer we took a "ski bus" to Hafjell. It was only about $10 for both of us and ran back and forth between the two almost every hour. Our trip had been remarkably relaxing thus far: everything was packed, we were early to the train station and the bus to Hafjell. All was looking good.

Upon arriving at the bus stop in front of Hafjell we were directed to the Booking Center, about 100 yards down the road. Hmm, ok, it's a little far from the base of the mountain where all the other buildings are, but alright. We check in, everything's good, we get our key to our cabin and are handed a sheet with driving directions to our cabin, which as I mentioned, is about halfway up the mountain. Great! So where to we catch the shuttle?...You don't have a shuttle?...How do people get around the resort?...We need to have a car or get a cab?!?

Cue panic.

Our cabin (4 units in each)

Ok, we're smart, we can do this. Once we (ok, I) calm down a little, we call a cab to take us up to our place and decide to evaluate the situation once we get there. The cab ride cost $40 (ouch!) just to get to our place, but once we get there we see just how close we are to the slopes. We drop off our stuff and walk around to check out our location. There's a lift to take us to the top of the mountain right next to our cabin and one of the lifts from the bottom of the mountain ends just up the hill from where we're staying. In short, we realized we could ski down the mountain the next morning for free, buy our ski passes at the bottom, ski all day, and then take a lift up from the bottom and ski down a short path across the slope back to our cabin when we're done! All in all it worked out pretty nicely for not having a car.

We did end up taking the cab about 3 more times. Once to take us to the grocery store and back (we had a full kitchen in our cabin) and once to take us back up the mountain when the lifts closed early one night. But that still cost less than we would have paid to rent a car and buy gas for the 10 days we were there, so not too shabby.

I think you'll really get a kick out of how our 2nd trip to the grocery store went down. Determined not to pay for a cab this time, Tyler threw on his large backpack - with our winter boots in them - before we went skiing that day. When we were done, we took off our skiis & ski boots, left our skiis on the rack at the bottom of the hill, put our ski boots in one of the lockers they had at the base, put on our winter boots, walked just under a mile in the snow to the grocery store, filled our backpack and four grocery bags with groceries, walked back to the slopes, change back into our ski boots, tied our winter boots together and strapped them to the backpack, grabbed our skis and poles, took the lift up the mountain, and skied down to our place carrying the backpack, boots, and bags of groceries! Needless to say we were pretty pleased with ourselves.

About the highest the sun ever rose the whole time

It was gorgeous in Hafjell the whole time we were there, but it was ridiculously cold a couple days - getting as cold as -25F! Plus the sun was only up for a couple hours a day as we were there during the winter solstice. We skied every day, but on the coldest day we skied only about 2 hours before grabbing some hot cocoa at the top of the mountain and then skiing home. I don't think we could have asked for better ski conditions either. We got there the 18th, we left the 26th, and we pretty much had the mountain all to ourselves until Christmas Eve. There were literally times that we went down a trail and didn't see a single other person on the slopes with us. That in and of itself was nice, but it also provided us with great chances to just stop and enjoy the beautiful scenery around us sometimes and take some great pictures.

Without a doubt the most fun part of the trip was the sledding. Yes, the sledding. We got a schedule of the special events that were taking place while we were there for Christmas, and one of the items on the agenda was sledding. I insisted we go and Ty humored me. The first night night of sledding it was dark (as it was after 2:30pm, of course) and we had no clue where we were going. Remember, there weren't many people on the mountain during the day and there were even fewer people around that night. We finally found an employee who pointed us in the direction of the beginner's hill. Turns out that's what we were sledding down. And these weren't your ordinary sleds. These we basically go carts with steering wheels and a hand brake! And we were the only folks there! The steering wheels also had a little notch at the top. We soon found out this was so that the little anchor at the end of the lift (that normally goes between your legs) could attach directly to the sled and drag you all the way to the top of the hill. So we paid the college kids working the lift (less than $10 each), signed waivers, donned helmets, drug our carts to the lift, and they hooked them up and off we went. We obviously never skied down this little part of the mountain and the trail was surprisingly longer than expected. At the top I realized I suddenly had to untether the cart from the lift with one hand, while trying to steer the cart with the other to avoid going down a little ditch at the end and into a tree. It took a few trips up the trail to get used to doing this.

I don't think there is any better way to describe it than how Tyler did: it was like being in Mario Kart! The rush going down the hill on these carts was amazing. The trail was wide with bumps and hills and it was SO awesome! Then there was a sharp curve at the end of the trail (which they had to mark with flares so you could spot it in the dark) and you knew you were a pro when you could turn with one hand, pull the brake with the other, and stop right at the base of the lift, ready to go again, without flipping the cart or running over anyone in the process. We only paid for 30 minutes of sledding, but since no one was there they let us stay as long as we wanted and we were there almost two hours! We had so much fun we went back a couple days later on Christmas when they offered it again so we could sled another time. I've posted three videos below of us sledding:

up the hill

attempt #2 to film (#1 wasn't even worth posting)

Final attempt

This was a beautiful, fun and relaxing trip and while we missed seeing our families for the holidays, we loved taking this little winter getaway together.