Blue sea again Mar 3 2021

And suddenly after some warm days the wind turns west and small waves break the sea ice. Smaller and larger ice floes have started to sail east.

Four days ago I skied to the islet Lillskär and a bit further to make the photos of the incredible rainbow with my Nikon DSLR camera.

Today I walked to the islet on soft ice and took photos with my smartphone – both phone and me in waterproof suit and bag. Without I wouldn’t dare to enter any sea ice any longer.

So I have to say farewell to skiing on the sea ice but I welcome the kayak season that I’ll plan to start soon. Anyhow I’ll have to drag the kayak beyond Lillskär because between our house and the islet the water is still ice covered.

Look for the rainbow! Feb 27 2021

If you live in Northern Sweden and love snow, and it rains in the end of February …

… look for the rainbow!

Photographers note: click on the image to get a better version. This photo is not made for jpeg compression.

Drip, drip, drip … Feb 24 2021

… it sounds, when I go outside. After a longer period with frosty winter weather a period of warm period has started today. The forecast predicts plus temperatures for the next ten days, at least in the daytime.

Yesterday was quite windy, -4 °C and it had been snowing a while. Despite the frost temperatures the snow was mixing with tiny rain drops that froze on the outer window pane of my home office room. I took the opportunity for a last “sub zero” tour with skies.

First I had to climb a snow drift beside the house. There I had a look on our barbecue place. Do you see the two benches in the photo below ;-)? Then I entered the sea ice and followed the coastal line until I reached the spot where I saw the open water last weekend. Now the ice floes first had frozen together and then were covered with snow. Now it’s not possible any longer for me to distinguish between stable and weak ice. So, the sea ice skiing season may be over now. The rest of the tour I skied on land until I was home again.

Appendix: That’s the table on our terrace. We had waited for the snow to cover it completely but this place heads to the sea and is exposed to the wind, so the snow drifts were lower than on the other side of the house.

The forest is covered in snow Jan 24 2021

Snow fell in the last two weeks. Not in the South of Sweden, much less in the North of Lapland, but a lot in the province Västerbotten where Annika and I live, amongst others a bit west and north of Umeå.

Today we wanted to go up the hill Hemberget in Tavelsjö (or at least try). We parked our car at the church, crossed the road and skied up to the cemetery. There we followed the advice of a sign to cross the cemetery. Leaving the wrought iron gate behind we were lucky to find a snowmobile trail to follow through the forest. The forest was deeply covered in snow.

The trail crossed a cross-country ski run twice and vanished into thin air. We followed the way marks on the ski run and then left it to continue on untouched snow. At least we tried. While I managed to ski ten metres, Annika who has much shorter skis was bogged down in the deep powder. It was no surprise, I already guessed that we wouldn’t reach the top due to the snow conditions. So we changed plans and skied on the Tavelsjö skidspår, the cross-country ski run. A short, but extremely beautiful circular trail. It was so fun to slide on the perfectly prepared run that I forgot to take any photos.

Cabins at the forests edge (taken on our return trip by car)

The snow in the forest was round 130 cm deep. How I measured it? With my ski pole, which is 150 cm long. I sticked it into the snow at many places and looked about how much was left in average. But there’s also another method of measurement:

The photo was taken three steps beside the ski run. Here the snow was so loose, that even with skis I stood knee deep in snow, sinking deeper with every motion. I unmounted the skis and hopped. With a PLOP! – I landed in chest deep powder snow and took a selfie for my blog. Then I wanted to continue to catch up with Annika. I wasn’t stuck but I didn’t I manage to get my feet onto the skis that now lay one metre above my feet in the powder. I had to crawl back to the ski run where it was easy again to mount. I guess we never would have reached the summit of Hemberget today, at least not with these skis.

So I plan to look for Tegsnäs skis for Annika. It’s time. These wooden skis are a much better choice for such snow. There are 225 – 240 cm long and also broader than normal tour skis. Disadvantage: I’m not sure if we manage to put them into Annika’s Volkswagen Golf. Well, we’ll see …

After the snow … Jan 22 2021

Where’s the way to our house?

Another snow warning level 2 Jan 21 2021

Just nine days after the last snow warning that brought up to a metre snow in Västernorrland another snow warning was issued for today. And it has been snowing (and still is) and blowing since early morning. Time for a ski tour through the forest between two meetings …

Why I have time for a ski tour when working? Because as an employee of the Norwegian Polar Institute you have the right to two paid hours of training/sport/outdoor activities each week. One of the advantages of being employed there!

I went Spåret – “the track”, a circular route just 500 metres from here. It’s 3½ km long and leads through forests, over rock and along some swamps. Now with half a metre of snow you only see the the forest. Anything else is covered by white snow. And so is the small boggy pond: You should know where the planks cross it because under the snow there is still liquid mud.

This time the plank bridge was easy to find, because I could see the ski tracks that Annika and I left last weekend, when we skied Spåret the first time. I continued through the forest. I have jogged and promenaded this track many times, otherwise I hardly would have found the way.

Skiing was quite exhausting because my skis sank down at least 20 cm with each step, sometimes even knee deep. Will I come back in time to participate the next meeting? I guess I have to ski faster and take less photos. The last one I took was when I crossed Södra Obbolavägen, our only road to “civilisation”.

To make it short: I arrived in time.

Some hours later I had a special after work activity: clearing a roof of snow. Most roofs had been blown free but there was one large snowdrift on the roof of our main house that I shovelled away while standing on the old metal ladder.

Clearing the roof (Screenshot of a movie, that Annika Kramer made)

The ladder stands still there. Probably I’ll have to do some more shovelling tomorrow again. While I write this blog entry a huge snowdrifts starts to cover the bottom part of my home office window. What a pity, that it probably will rain on Saturday. One of the few disadvantages when living directly by the coast where it uses to be warmer than in the inland.

Ice fog and hard rime Jan 20 2021

When it’s cold – -17 °C yesterday morning – and large parts of the Baltic Sea is still open ice fog forms over the sea. When this fog turns to the land hard rime will cover the bare trees making them look like fragile snow sculptures. A wonderful view.

Icy morning – the trees are packed in hard rime

Icy morning – some islands are surrounded by ice fog

Fresh snow fell home over night Jan 13 2021

After yesterday’s snow, that mostly hissed by horizontally due to wind speeds up to 24 m/s the wind was calming down over night. To my surprise 20 additional cm of snow fell on the ground last night without having being blown away.

What a wonderful winter morning. Hardly any wind, still snowing, -7 °C and our house dressed in white velvet.

Snow covered pine in the noonday sun. Jan 3 2021

#justaphoto

Lunch break Nov 20 2020

This article is part of the series “2020-10: New in Tromsø”.

Days grow shorter and shorter in Tromsø so I took a small outside promenade in my lunch break to catch a bit of daylight. Tromsø is so beautiful with 10 cm of fresh snow that had fallen since yesterday.

I’m not sure if the snow will stay for longer or melt away soon but it doesn’t matter for me. That’s because on Sunday I’ll take the airplane home to Obbola in Sweden and will stay there the rest of the year.

But that’s another story that will be told on Sunday when I’ll spend many hours in Oslo Gardermoen and Stockholm Arlanda waiting for the connection flights.