A nice if somewhat cold Sunday spent walking up Lauvåsknollen near Notodden. The trip is about 2km one way, with an elevation of almost 200 metres. Not particularly hard in and of itself, but there are two trails from the parking lot to the summit. One goes through relatively open woodlands on a well trodden path. The other is (or at least was when I was there) completely un-trodden, with the exception of the occasional moose, and goes through rather dense forest. I of course didn’t know any of this, and I’ll let you guess which trail I walked up. The attached pictures may give you a hint! So for my future reference, and for anyone else considering this trip; when you get to the sign that tells you it’s 1.9km to the top going either right or left: Go right! I spent a little under 2 hours walking up, and a little under one hour coming back down. Temperatures between -18°C and -12°C. This was my first real excursion on snow shoes, and I have to say – snow shoes in dense forest is hard work. Uphill in dense forest harder still! But the sense of achievement when I reached the top made it all worth while!
The FT891 and the inverted-V performed well and in about 15 minutes I had the following 10 in the log, all on FT4:
- RC2FB, Alexander – Russia
- DL1BQR, Rolf – Germany
- LZ1JZ, Tony – Bulgaria
- SV3BLX, Christos – Greece
- R1TAX, Viktor – Russia
- EW6GB, Andrei – Belarus
- F4FWI, Jean-Luc – France
- 2E1IJU, Ernie – England
- 5B4AHL, David – Cyprus
- R4KR, Alexey – Russia
