No photos for Thursday, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.
We had booked a “scenic snowmobile tour” for the morning, with a (for us) fairly early pick-up of 9:30. As we hadn’t ridden a snowmobile before, we had chosen the shorter, two and a half hour trip, rather than the four-or-five hour trek into the mountains that was also available. So we got up early and had breakfast and got ready. It was dark and snowing outside.
We were duly collected by another guide, who was also lovely. Picked up another couple of guys from the other hotel down the road and then headed North towards the National Park which was where the excursion started. Another change room with a choice of warmer over-clothes, boots, mittens and of course helmets and goggles. Chastened by the previous day’s outing we both accepted the over-pants and I chose to try a pair of their boots, to see if they were better than what I had (I don’t think that they were).
Suited up we moved outside for the briefing: how the controls work, how the machine would behave in various situations. How it would and could tip over on slopes, and how you had to bodily counter-balance to prevent that from happening, but if it did happen you had to keep your arms and legs inboard, to avoid snapping them off under the (450kg) weight of the machine. This was all a bit much for Cath, who decided that I would enjoy the ride more if she were not sitting behind me, screaming. So she adjourned to the nearby hotel for the duration.
Those of us driving (me on one machine, the other two sharing the driving of the other) were set to do figure-of-eights in the car park while Cath was dropped up to the hotel, and when the guide returned there was a bit more question-and-answer and briefing about the course and then we were off.
Fairly slowly at first, over some bumps and turns, across a bridge over a brook, then turned around and up the mountain along the hiking/skiing trail. We passed some hikers coming down (slowly) before getting higher and into ungraded paths. There was a constant battle between fogging up my visor or glasses and freezing from the wind rushing into my helmet. I needed it up most of the time, in order to see the path ahead: it was a white path against a white background, under a white sky. Very tricky to follow, and I know that I drove the wrong side of the path-signing sticks a couple of times.
When we got to the plateau at the top, the scenic view was hidden behind a grey wall of snowfall. We stopped for the excursion picnic anyway. It was freezing again, but the mittens and extra clothes were doing a decent job. Unfortunately you can’t really hold a cup of warm lingenberry juice in a mitten, so I took mine off to eat, and my hands were frozen when I put them back on again. Slightly helped afterwards by the heated handlebars. The winds had blown all of the snow off the top area, so we couldn’t “hare around” there as the guide had intended. We just headed back down, after the other riders switched driver/passenger positions. Stopped at the hotel on the way to pick up Cath, who rode down to the snowmobile park on the back of the guide’s machine. The temperature (and my hands) had warmed up significantly in that little drop: conditions are very localized!
We got back to the lodge at about mid-day and spent the rest of the day veging out (as they say). It stayed snowy and grey all day and all night. We kept an eye on the aurora-cam web site, but it also persisted in grey-out.
Leave a Reply