Well, it's not often you are contemplating the crossing of a fast, rather knarly looking river whilst composing blog posts in your head! Heaven knows why, but I was struck by a poetic moment the other day at a rather inappropriate time.
Spring is here. Most definitely. Visually and physically (hence the wet feet).
I should add - I was
trying to ski when I encountered this river in full force. I had been struggling through soupy snow (heavy, waterlogged, granular: you get the picture?) which was proving fiddly enough to ski through when I came across a benign looking 'stream' on the path. It was small enough, but not to be trifled with. An ice channel gushing over the path - like a sort of luge track, with a deep gauge to it. With all that inverted light, it was hard to gauge its depth. It looked deep enough, yet exactly how deep and where the max. depth was, was hard to say. Deep Enough anyway. And Fast Enough. Especially on skis.
It reminded me of a river on Svalbard in De Greerdalen, when I encountered another knarly river, all set to 'surge' (consequence of a springtime surging river: to be possibly swept away, over the ice or under). Geography leader Lucy and I were really stuffed for where to cross safely, to get back to camp. Blue ice. Big river under. Slushtastic. Not a good feeling.
Anyhow, back to Bones valley, where my nemesis was a mere trickle by comparison! But still, unskiable (sigh).
The detour was to clambor up the river, to find a better crossing. And it was as I ice climbed on skis up the slippery upper banks, hauling myself along by grabbing for trees as my skis preferred to go downwards - watching the swirling water breaking through the ice and thinking 'don't cross above a hazard' like a Mountain Leader mantra - well, that was when I thought of this blogpost.
So here it is.
It's Norwegian National Day today. It's about 20C out there. And has been this hot since Wednesday. It's extremely nice, but rivers are in full spate and a flood warning has been issued. So, there's a flipside to everything.
I was up a sheer sided valley yesterday skiing/slush trudging up to the Swedish border, and witnessed the full force of ice and snow and rocks and mud when the mountainsides clear themselves suddenly of their winter cloak of snow. Quick reactions won't save you when several tons of such rubble sweeps down the mountain slopes and into the river at the bottom. Yes, I got out of that valley pretty darn fast.
The ski season is pretty much over for mere mortals who don't live above 500m.
And I can definitely state - here comes summer :)
