Sandbakken sports cafe

Today I replaced my running workout with a cross country skiing trip with my partner. The snow is going to rain away next week, so we wanted to use this last chance to get in a skiing trip before it goes.

The conditions were amazing. Great tracks, partially sunny and not really any wind. Perhaps the temperature was slightly colder than ideal (-11 C reported by my car at the parking lot), but I'll take it. We started our trip at a place called Skullerud in south-east Oslo. Our target was Sandbakken sports cafe, which is a about 9 km from our starting point. We have skied this route many times before, and know it well.

The scenery along the way was great. The trees are all frozen over from the somewhat weird weather conditions we have had the last week. Plenty of natural frozen portals where the trees are bending over the tracks. In the cold, my beard also freezes and I look something like an abominable snowman.

Parts of the trail are narrow and slightly technical, but there are also stretches on wide forest roads where there is plenty of space for diagonal skiing:

At the cafe which was our destination, we stopped for a quick bite. The place was crowded (see the amount of skis in the picture below, and we found nowhere to sit, so we just ate a pastry while standing, and headed back.

We took it easy, and used about an hour each way. Even so, I was feeling quite tired a few hours later, so it seems that just being in activity for that long in the cold takes a bigger toll on the body than would expect. In any case, I am very happy that we took this trip today, it feels great to be out in nature like that!