Rødtinden (07.04.2013)
| Start point | Storelva |
|---|---|
| Characteristic | Randonnée/Telemark |
Until now, the thought of taking a trip up Rødtinden has never appealed to me. It's 25m short of only 500m high, ca. 2km from the road in Storelva and attracts as many crowds in the same way as a British high street would do. Kjedelig has always been my conclusion. However, after injuring my leg on Sydalsfjellet two weeks earlier and still not having regained complete freedom of movement, I finally decided to give in and reduce my skiing ambitions for a while. Rødtinden was now on my list of trips worth considering.
After almost 2 weeks of continual bad weather, high skredfare and numerous skred-related incidents in Tromsø, today dawned bright and sunny and there was a proper påskestemning outdoors. It would have been pretty shameful to have yet another working-at-home-at-the-weekend day. Rødtinden is also generally recognized as one of the 'safer' options for a tur-choice when the skredfare is significant. Although that's not to say its completely risk-free since no mountain is. Kamila was still in recovery after being plagued with flu-like symptoms a few days before, so neither of us were completely in form for a regular topptur today and that pretty much decided today's trip objective. Julia, one of Kamila's other friends was relatively new to toppturing and also joined us. I was quite relieved to be in the company of both of them with the knowledge that the day's trip would most probably go in a nice and relaxed style.
We started the trip around 11.30am and followed perfect-condition tracks (thanks to those who'd skied before us) up through the forest, which fortunately turned out to be one of the least testing forests I've experienced to date. It was more or less the same all the way to the top. The gradient was steady, the sun was satisfyingly warm and the views behind us over Håkøya towards Tromsdalstinden were really nice. Even when we stopped a few times just to stand around and chat, the temperature was very comfortable and none of us even came close to feeling chilly. Nope, the winter season definitely felt well behind us now. But I could sense the muscles which had been hurt were still on the road to better health. They felt a little weaker than in my non-injured leg (which ironically, was my 'weaker' leg) but all-in-all, the trip up had not been stressful and had not been at all painful.
So then it was just the nedkjøring to do, the part which I had been worrying masses about before even starting the trip and all the way up. As things turned out, it went surprisingly OK. There was maybe 25-30cm of new powder snow above about 300moh, and it was quite easy to carve out the turns. Lower down the water content seemed to be a bit higher and the snow felt quite heavy. I actually kept expecting to crash, lose my balance or worse get really bad pains from the muscles around my knee while trying to turn. Fortunately nothing like that happened, although I was being more careful than usual which probably helped. Even the dreaded skogskjøring went without any dilemmas and all of us arrived back down by the cars again feeling kjempefornøyd and glad to have finally gotten a trip in decent påskevær.
Reaching the top of Rødtinden felt like a mission accomplished. But getting back down without pain or falls on a non-fully-functioning leg (actually I did end up on my bum once) seemed like the year's biggest achievement. Verdict: my ski season is not over - and now both Kamila and I are glad to say we have finally visited Rødtind - and enjoyed the experience! I never imagined I'd ever say that.
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