Page 22 - Wish Stream Year of 2017

and cooling rivers. This was ideal as the walking in and around the surrounding hills was rather tough with big climbs and no respite from the sun. The terrain was also very unforgiving under- foot and we all ended up on our bums on mul- tiple occasions, which was great. After a day in the heat, we all enjoyed getting back to our cabin and having some well-earned ice-cream!
Our final day walking was the biggest. We’d seen a lot of the surrounding area but wanted to conquer a decent peak. As it is a ski resort for much of the year Big Bear offered us the perfect challenge. With a climb of over 3000ft, Sugar Loaf Mountain was a great challenge for all of us. There were still sporadic remainders of snow dotted around, which made both ascent and decent very interesting. It was certainly the toughest day but worth the effort for the views at the top (if slightly obscured by dense coniferous tree coverage!).
Overall, our time in Big Bear was a great expe- rience. It provided the perfect combination of R&R and adventurous pursuits that allowed us to decompress from the pressures of the previ- ous term and the competition.
Exercise POLAR CADET
OCdt Bryan
Gliding over thick snowdrifts to eventually summit Mt Sandavatnet and finding spec- tacular views of the barren, and eerily quiet
valley north of Finse, was undoubtedly the pin- nacle of our expedition to Norway. The total absence of human habitation gave an authentic feeling of wilderness and an appreciation of how truly remote we were on a mountain 2100m high in the Scandinavian Mountain Range. After three days of near continuous travelling and training, the four other Officer Cadets and I had managed to fully escape civilisation.
The expedition was both a culturally immersive experience for five Officer Cadets new to Scan- dinavia and naïve of Norwegian customs, and physically a testing environment through which we developed entirely new skills ranging from avalanche recovery drills to ‘skinning’ and climb- ing up mountains on our skis. With a range of previous downhill experience, it was a formida- ble learning curve for three of the Cadets who had never touched a pair of skis before to find themselves traversing kilometres over frozen lakes in only a few days.
20 SANDHURST