Virvasshytta

A rest and recovery day today. After breakfast a few of us ventured out to rescue the pulks and their contents. With most of their contents in sacs the pulks were light and manoeuvrable enough to take up the rather twisting route between trees that led onto the bridge. Looking down from the bridge onto the river it seemed to be flowing quite healthily. So glad our explorations of it didn't get beyond the banks last night.

A few photos were taken now that we could see what was what. I've caught John & Fiona at the hut door and as you can see more snow is falling.

Normally there's a poetic theme to our expeditions. Bits of appropriate or inappropriate poetry being composed en-route, however this year Mick deemed we should all come up with a short story of no more than 500 words. It's a long time since I've composed a short story and I must admit the challenge was intriguing. With apologies to Vanilla Sky and Avatar here's what I came up with:

Xi Xian was a senior archivist at MHE and today was launch day for her latest project. Xi had already managed two successful launches of high profile historical events, but sensing the public were now after more individual experiences she had instructed her team of 2D miners to look for something a bit different. It took them almost three months to find source material that matched Xi's requirements. It then took a further three months of discussions and trials with Geo-mapping and Weather Modelling before the project was deemed viable and announced to the public.

Take-up had been excellent with the initial proposal for 49 booths being quickly increased to 210 and even that meant there was currently a three month waiting list.

The Public announcement now gave Xi's team a six month timescale to completion. The 2D material, photographs, movies and text, had already been passed to the 3D renderers. The background material on most of the participants was fairly sparse, but having one of the founding fathers of the organisation in the cast was a great help in padding out the avatar characteristics.

Geo-mapping had an intriguing task. The area in question no longer existing in any recognisable form and historically being a remote non-populous area there was little for them to work on other than basic flat maps, but with reference to some of the 2D material a realistic landscape was created.

Weather modelling was more straightforward. Meteorological data for the time was readily available and interfaced with only minor manipulations.

During the final month before launch Xi had been heavily involved in system testing the complete experience. She had uncovered some unexpected personality traits in the avatars, but referring back to their designers found them to be well within their operational parameters. Eventually Xi realised these traits rather enhanced the whole experience and signed it off a week before launch.

She was now intrigued as to how the public experiences would pan out and today she was going to witness the start of the first. She sat alone in MHE's broadcast centre awaiting the entrance of the first participants. She had no idea of how many were watching her broadcast image as she cleared her throat and started.

"Friends, you are about to meet the first seven participants in Mountain Heritage Experience's latest adventure, constructed from original photographs and material from early 21st century Earth. They will experience a time when the environment was out of their control. The only food and clothes they had access to be what they carried with them. They will be players in a primitive adventure where anything can happen. In other words friends, they will experience an adventure from a time when real adventures were still possible. So in avatar form please welcome, Mick, Kathy, Andy, Fiona, John, Philip & Longshanks, ready for the very first running of, or maybe that should be the second running of our Bodø to Mo-i-Rana experience."