I didn’t really have any expectations before heading to Norway. We were a rather big Austrian Crew heading for the 4* Competition in Røldal, but we stayed a couple of days more to be able to explore.

At the airport the 5 of us squeezed all our stuff into a skoda octavia with roofbox, which surprisingly worked out really good.

Arriving after a 5 hour car drive to Røldal I was astonished by the beauty of the landscape.

This year there was a lot of snow in Norway, so the tiny red hut we rented was standing amidst a magic winter landscape, while in Austria it was already spring.

Next morning we started our first tour, just heading up the road direction of the ski resort and through the first tunnel. We started touring there, weather looked okay, there was only a tiny slab of fog on one side of the valley.

Here it comes comes: the ‘special effect’ of Norwegian winter life: Weather changes immediately, much faster and much more frequent than in the Alps. One has to learn to not give up hope, cause sun peers through the fog as fast as the fog draws in. Kofi (Wolfgang Kofler), already experienced with Norwegian weather, advised to wait. After half an hour of chatting in the fog we had to give up.

Sightseeing instead. We continued driving to Odda, a town located next to a fjord, where we hiked around town and explored the surrounding landscape.

Norway in general is rather expensive, BUT fresh salmon is cheaper than in Austria, and there is -50% stickers on random stuff in the supermarket, so one can easily live from that…

Passing by at the local fish seller temped us to buy a kilo of smoked salmon…yummy!

Next day weather was better, so we actually made it to the top…such a stunning landscape, covered in crazy amounts of snow…

In Røldal the slope tends to be rather flat on top, then very steep and rolling in the middle before it flattens out again. It’s really hard to find the right entries, one can see the take-offs of drops only shortly before.

When the competition was cancelled on Thursday, I went hiking with Adam and Marek, and we experienced the vastness of the high plateau above the face.

Because there was a misunderstanding about the rider’s passes, we had to hike up the slope to get to our starting point…rules are rules up north, no discussion necessary…that attitude is actually quite relaxing…Riding down we enjoyed fresh powder and nearly untracked fields…

The Competition, the Røldal Freeride Challenge had to be rescheduled to different faces a couple of times and ended up taking place on a small face on Saturday during heavy rain fall. On Sunday we had massive Powder again. For me competition was a total fail, but I’m happy for Alex Hoffmann, who won the SNB Men and I was cheering for Mikki and Anna (Orlova), who got 2nd and 3rd in SNB Women. Bine(Sabine Schipflinger) got 5th at the Skier girls, which is also a great result.

The parties in Røldal are legendary, locals and riders were going crazy, dancing till the early morning hours, and some of the riders managed to smuggle their own booze inside, cause beer has a crazy prize.

Next day after I decided to go riding with Marek and Adam, the fog was moving in and out of faces all the time, so there were no real lines possible, but there were 30cm of fresh powder. And after riding we enjoyed a great BBQ in the snow.

Thanks for cooking, Guys! And thanks for the good travel company to all the others!