Skimo

Spending this winter season mostly in Stockholm every chance is taken to get away to the mountains and of course you want to be as effective as possible, so then Skimo or ski mountaineering is a perfect combination. Skimo is a sport where you climb up and ski down a mountains as fast as possible and at the same time negotiate the terrain encountered. Unfortunately there are no real mountains in Stockholm, but luckily there are a couple of ski hills where you can get some vertical meters.

On one of those hills a competition was arranged called ´´Hammarby 2h´´ (www.vertex.cx/2h/). A race were you have to go up and down as many times within 2 hours, considering that the there´s only about 90 vertical meters gained every lap it means a lot of transitions from climbing to downhill mode. Of course I couldn’t resist to participate. It turned out to be a nice race. I managed to go up and down 19 times, far less than the winner Patrik Nordin with 24 laps, but still ending up at a 7^th place. After the race I ran in to a guy called Magnus Jensen it turned out that we both had been thinking of participating in a race called ´´Keb-classic´´ the ultimate race for ski mountaineers in Sweden at the moment. Unfortunately none of us had a partner so plans started to grow to team up. Before making the decision we wanted to participate in the race ´´King of six pack´´ in the mountains of Jämtland to see how we worked as a team.

Warm up run on getryggen

Technique training and filming 

We found out that the days before and after the the sixpack race there was a Skimo training camp organized by no one less than Emelie Forsberg, one of  the best skyrunner and ski mountaineer in the world. We got the chance to participate and couldn´t say no to that.

We had four days of training including the day of the race. We stayed in the mountain hut ´´Storulvån´´ runned by the Swedish tourist association (STF). The first day was a day of easy uphill skiing getting the legs started. The second day, the day before the race we worked on skinning technique, taking in and of skins, putting skis on backpack etc. In the evening we packed our gear and got ready for the race the day after, of course we first enjoyed a nice 3 course dinner.

During the race

The day of the race it was Magnus, Gustav and me participating as a team together with 21 other teams. Because of the race being an easy going nothing official race, we were allowed to decide our own start time and our own route. It was a great day with fantastic weather. We managed to climb the 6 summits that were included in the six pack in 3 hours and 15 minutes at around 2000 vertical meters which gave us a 6^th place, and most important made it back to the lunch in the mountain hut.

´´Snodden´´ the team 

The last day we did some interval training before hitting the road all the way back to Stockholm. The weekend was a success so me and Magnus booked Keb-classic as soon as we could.

We raced in Keb-classic last weekend I´ll put a report of that as soon as possible until then have a look on www.kebclassic.se.

Powder skiing and racing

The weather continues to be normal… in other words loads of grey snowy days and once in a while sunshine days. Unfortunately I still haven´t been able to climb anything high up. 

But to be honest this weather is so good for me. I started skiing about 6 years ago. I have been lucky to since then mostly get 60 days+ seasons, the down part is most of them in the profession as a ski patroller. So skiing in walk mode with a heavy backpack and loads of poles in my arms is not the problem. But as you can guess the ski technique is more towards survival skiing. So the latest weeks I’ve really been focusing on position and technique. On top of that we´ve had several amazing powder days.

Helbronner, Italy
a bit tracked here, a good reason to get the camera out.

One of those days was in Courmayeur on the Italian side of the massif called the Helbronner lift. It´s only a 20 minute drive away but it´s such a difference. The cable car is very old (unfortunately going to be replaced by a hypermodern one) there are rarely queues and if there are no worries; the café selling 1 euro Italian coffee is just around the corner. Everything got another paste really Italian style. The day we went here we were lucky the weather was great and the snow fairly stable. This made it possible to ski al the way from the top meaning 2000 meter in altitude runs. After a couple of runs I decided to stop, my legs were done and it was getting a bit warmer. Al the skiing is on very avalanche exposed slopes or just below it so make sure to watch out!

Just before the start

Two years ago I participated in a rando-race in the Kebnekaise massif in Sweden called ´´keb-classic´´ together with Martin Karlsson. For that occasion I had invested in a semi racing kit. After that i´ve only been using it when training, but when I found out that there was a race held in Les houches I couldn´t stay behind. It was a lot of fun getting in to racing mode again. It was a simple race with only 850 meter vertical uphill and no downhill. There we´re maybe 30 people participating and mostly al geared up in superlight gear, this was going to be tough. In the end I managed to get up in 52.02 minutes the fastest i´ve done this track this year. The winner was loads quicker only 41 minutes! Would be fun to get more racing done in the future!

 

Some look so fast!

And the finish. Good work Les houches for aranging this!