Life in Oslo Part 4: Skiing at Oslo Vinterpark

The prime ski season came a bit late to Norway this year. After having snow on my November 7th birthday for the first time in my life, I thought we were in for a long, cold winter. It turned out to be just the opposite. The early November snow melted, and we didn't really get much more until well into January. Even then, it came only in small amounts with days of melting in between.

That was down in Oslo city. Up in the hills of Nordmarka to the north, I'm sure it was still a disappointing year for snowfall if you ask the skiers and Tryvann ski center (Oslo Vinterpark), but there was at least enough to justify getting the skis out regularly. Or, in my case, to try out downhill skiing for the first time in several years and invest in my first pair of skis.

It was my friends Sigmund and Vetle who got me into the skiing spirit. Sigmund is quite an experienced skier and navigates the slopes and jumps with ease. Vetle is a recent skiing maniac who has been frequenting Tryvann to hone his skills all winter. The convenience of Tryvann also helped get me moving. I've talked before about how easy it is to access the outdoors using Oslo's public transit system, and Tryvann/Oslo Vinterpark is yet another example. All it takes is a ride from downtown on the subway (T-bane) line 1 to the Voksenkollen stop. From there, a bus shuttles skiers up to the front door of the ski resort a couple times an hour, or if you are impatient like me, you can trek up the hill towards the tall radio tower in about 20 minutes.

Take Line 1 west towards Frognerseteren from any of the main stops downtown, and get off at Voksenkollen (top left) to go to Tryvann/Oslo Vinterpark

For those of us who work during the day, skiing at Tryvann is best done on weeknights. The weekends are fine, and you get to ski during the daylight hours that way, but it is way more crowded, which means longer lift lines and less open space on the slopes. So my most recent trips have been at night during the week.

Perhaps inspired by Sigmund's jumping skills, I decided to bring out the GoPro Hero 5 on a recent trip. This would also be a chance to test out the stabilization function, and to record some of my first attempts at ski jumping for the historical record, which is to say to have the opportunity to laugh at my pathetic attempts and certain wipeouts for years to come.

We stepped up to the starting line for the series of small jumps, and I asked for any last words of advice from Sigmund. In typical Sigmund fashion, he offered the following quick reply: Just go fast!

Here's the quick highlights (and lowlights) from the evening:

After we were done jumping, we moved onto a new game: see how fast we can ski down the slope while using Snapchat's speedometer function to register our speed. This proved to be quite fun, but gave me another idea that Sigmund should try to use the dog face filter while speeding down the slope, the one where you stick your tongue out and your face looks like a dog licking its lips.

That's when it really got fun. Sigmund made a practice run, and stopped to see how it went. The result was hilarious - the filter barely came on at all, so it was mostly just Sigmund sticking his tongue out at his phone like a doofus. I quickly grabbed the phone and posted it to his story before he had a chance to delete it. Pure gold! I don't think I've laughed that hard in a while. We all got a good laugh from it, but being Snapchat, the options for preserving it were pretty much limited to taking a film of another phone:

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Adventure Every Day is a travel & exploration channel started in 2016. In addition to the Steemit blog, I post short films of my adventures to the Adventure Every Day YouTube channel.