It’s very tempting when travelling to return to places known to be good.  Espedalen, a valley north-west of Lillehammer, is such a place.  It’s well away from the sea, at over 700 “meters over havet”, or “m.o.h.” as the maps and signs put it) and in the central part of southern Norway, so the snow is good.  In the early part of the season the snow is usually very light, soft, deep and tiring in most of Norway, and the days short, so places like Espedalen which have many groomed tracks (løype) are the best place to go.  Access is easy (train to Lillehammer from the airport or Oslo, then a bus) and the terrain varies from sheltered valley to open plateau, so your day’s skiing can be tailored to the weather.  The photographs from my stay in Espedalen shown on this site were taken before the temperature unfortunately rose to 4°C.  How far does a bloke have to travel to get proper cool weather?

This time I stayed at Strand Fjellstue where the co-proprietors (Stefan and Surina Austheim) provide superb service and delicious and plentiful food.  Guests can have Thai food most nights (they even do take away for the locals in the district!), as Surina comes from Thailand.  Of course local elg (moose) and mountain goat are given the Thai treatment.  Smakte god!  Kjempe god!  Surina used to have a hotel at Phuket (before the 2004 tsunami destroyed it) so when I turned up for dinner the first night wearing thongs she immediately recognised me as an Australian.  (In defence of wearing thongs, they’re the perfect indoor footwear for overnight ski touring, light and compact.  You can get some very good light slippers here but they are more bulky.)

Anyway, cutting to the chase, there is some fine track skiing in Espedalen.  There is a large frozen lake (Espedalsvatnet), groomed roads along and up the hills (mostly on the western side), and large plateaux on either side of the valley, also with groomed tracks.  This is complemented by a Norway-wide web site (www.skisporet.no) that is updated in real time showing groomed tracks (indicating for each track the hours/days since the last pass by the grooming machine, and complete with blinking icons showing the current GPS signals from the machines), and a nifty I;75,000 cloth map of the region which if accidentally bleached would become the world’s largest and most expensive handkerchief.  Oh yes, old-fashioned signposts and topographic maps as well.

Espedalen, like most mountain and coastal parts of Norway, has numerous hytter.  The literal translation of “hytte” is “hut”, but “cabin” or “holiday home” would be more accurate.  Some are almost full-sized homes, and all are very comfortable.  People visit their hytte at Easter, summer holidays, school holidays, weekends or any other time they have available.  Whether it be for skiing, boating, fishing, walking or simply enjoying nature, hytter are an important part of Norwegians’ way of life.  This has long been the case, although as Norway has become more affluent (oil was discovered in the late 1960s, and large new reserves of oil and gas are still being found) the size and comfort of hytter have increased.

Some of the skiing in Espedalen was (as you can see from the photographs) in clear weather, but the sun tan didn't benefit much as the sun barely rose 25 degrees in the southern sky.