Page 58 - Wish Stream Year of 2018

Exercise NORDIC SKI
OCdt Hodson
Ex NORDIC SKI. Sitting at a warm – 16°C, Sjusjoen is a small town approximately 177km to the north of the capital of Norway,
Oslo. This warm winter wonderland was to be the expedition members’ home for the next 7 days. All members of the expedition started the two-and-a-half-hour journey to their new tempo- rary home from Oslo airport at around 1530hrs on Saturday the 15th December 2018. On arrival at the lodge, the team quickly settled in and ven- tured out into the snow to grab the essential shop to fuel their bodies for the next few days. That evening brought about the realities of Nor- dic skiing with a short intro to the history of what Nordic is all about:
The tradition of cross-country skiing began thousands of years ago in northern Scandinavia where skis were used as transportation across the winter landscape. A ski was unearthed in Sweden that is dated at 4500 years old, and rock drawings have been discovered depicting hunters using some kind of primitive ski. It was
not until the early 1800s, however, that skiing began to develop into a leisure sport.
After all were well briefed on the history behind Nordic skiing and what we were going to achieve, we set about making our bed for the night and got some rest for the next day of excitement and freezing temperatures. As we woke the following morning everyone was raring to go and collect the Nordic skiing equipment from the Sport1 located in the town. After all kit was picked up, we headed back to the lodge to drop all the stores off and headed to the local town of Lillehammer to pick up any last-minute essentials needed for a week in the artic condi- tions. That night we had an early one to stand us in good stead for the first day on the snow.
Day one – Having arrived on the Saturday, we were keen to commence NF1. Our instructor taught us how to prepare the skis with grip wax and standard wax. All in all, ski prep was around twenty minutes, which was a god-send as the
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