Ski Krokstrand to Virvasshytta via Folk Museum

28 km, 480m Ascent, 120m Descent.

The lady who ran the hotel at Krokstrand opened early this morning in order for us to have breakfast before setting off. She told us her Mum ran a Folk Museum that was about 2km up our road today, so we had to pop in for a look round.

The museum was at the end of the road proper, but there was a good snowmobile track on the service road after that so the going was good but it still takes a while to cover 21km uphill. Once off the road we were back in deep snow with trail breaking and navigating between the trees proving problematical but that didn't stop Kathy getting the best bird tick of the trip with a Snowy Owl, I've never seen one and didn't see this one either, so exceedingly jealous.

As we started to lose light we knew there was still a river to cross before the hut. A bridge was marked on the map, but possible we could get across earlier. Mick investigated, but as soon as he approached the bank it started to give way. You need to get here sharpish was the call from Philip. Kathy certainly did, I was a bit more sluggish and actually wasn't even a lot of good at getting our now rather damp leader out of his hole. I even failed to get a picture, although I'd have really got shouted at if that had been my first reaction. Mick's now iced up skis were pretty useless and he swapped with the spares. Andy who at the time was out in front by himself had a similar experience, but fortunately could extricate himself only suffering from damp skis and iced up skis. We'd been lucky.

Navigation in the darkness was proving too problematical. The bridge had been found, but a pulkable route hadn't so we abandoned them and got ourselves to the hut. Mick and Kath returned with empty sacs to bring enough provisions for tonight and the morning. A full pulk rescue could be launched tomorrow.

It'd been 9:30 when we left Krokstrand after breakfast this morning and we arrived at Virvasshytta at 19:00 plus we'd had our stop at the Folk Museum so not bad going for a big uphill day

Today's photo courtesy of Mick shows the main display wall at the Folk Museum.