Powder, slush and lack of shovels

Almost a week has passed in Bariloche, a charming little town just 30 min from the ski slopes on Cerro Cathedral. Ramon, my host and doc in the ski patrol, has busy days on the mountain as it is still high season. Every day huge buses arrive packed with tourists. Although the ski resort itself is not much bigger than Hemsedal, the tourist facilities surpasses Norway by many times in terms of commercializing the concept of lift-based skiing. One example: I planned to go back-country touring, but forgot my shovel at home. I have visited at least 14 mountain stores, but although most shops have the most advanced in googles, sunglasses and fashion ski-wear, nobody sells touring equipment. In one store they didn´t understand what I could possibly need a shovel for while skiing and advised me to try a store that sells gardening equipment! This is also a problem for the local mountain guides; they have very little work during winter as hardly anybody goes touring or off-piste skiing. This is really to bad, as Patagonia has a number of well maintained cabins that provide bases for a vast amount of spectacular ski touring. The skiing is otherwise pretty good, escpecially in the woodlands where I've enjoyed both light powder and heavy slush the past week. However, heavy rains the last 36 hours have made sightseeing Bariloche a more pleasant activity. For the coming weekend and next week I´ll be a student with the Patagonia School where I´ll be taking an intensive course in spanish. Hopefully with a little skiing in between.. No vaccaciones en el Patagonia!

Turtagrø

This weekend I met Benjamin at Turtagrø. He's got a lot of film and photos from JOSMAR 2008. The editing process takes a lot of work, but the results look good. Hopefully we´ll have a trailer ready in a couple of weeks. While at Turtagrø we used the opportunity to air out our brains in Skaga-/Styggedalen.

DENALI NPS

June 10th to July 12th I worked as a volunteer doctor for the National Park Rangers on Denali, Alaska. Our patrol lasted for 26 days and took us to app 6000m altitude. The NPS every year hire people on volunteer basis to assist the rangers with mountain rescue, medical issues, cleaning the mountain and other practical aspects in making the mountain a safe and pleasant place to be. Besides enjoying the mountains, the experience is educational, social and can be highly recommended. Our patrol was not very busy, but we saw our share of AMS and frostbite. Kevin, Nick, Ro and Weston: You are great people to work with, take care.

The Plan formes...

As the temperature in Hemsedal rised to new heigths during July, multiple phone calls and e-mails around the globe eventually transformed into a preliminary schedule for 2008/2009:





2008

June 10 - July 15 Denali, Alaska
August 9 - 27 Alta Patagonia, Argentina
Sept 2 - Oct 11 The Alps
Oct 12 - Oct 27 Maldives
Nov 4 - Dec 11 Borneo
Dec 15 - Feb 1 Antarctica

2009
Feb 15 - 22 DiMM Scotland

To be continued....