Page 62 - Wish Stream Year of 2018

explore an abandoned hamlet in the reservoir basin before climbing out on some of the steep- est ascents of the whole week, making it back to the van just as the skies opened.
The last two days were dogged by continued poor weather, keeping our routes to more sen- sible forest rides over the more ambitious stuff we had originally planned. Even so, we were
fortunate to find lots of worthwhile technical trail riding. Our final ride of the trip was again along the coast and the weather finally cleared up for a beautiful finish by the sea. The trip was overall a great success; we all developed our mountain biking skills significantly over the week, going from relative beginners to being totally com- fortable on the exhausting uphill and technical downhill characteristics of the area.
Exercise SLIDING SOLDIER
OCdt Clifton
Ex SLIDING SOLDIER saw Officer Cadets Clifton, Boyle, Keville, Cox, Newton-Jones and Maltman travel to Hovden in Norway to
test their ski touring skills, and to undertake Ski Foundation Level 3 training over the Christmas break.
Abilities varied slightly, but a few rigorous days of instruction from Captain Graham Stephenson saw everybody mastering new skills, using new equipment, and working up a real sweat skin- ning uphill.
Sadly, the snowpack was very thin in Norway but every OCdt managed to complete avalanche training and become confident with new skills such as digging snow shelters, as well as testing our navigation skills in a challenging new terrain.
Competition became very fierce in the evenings for our ‘come dine with me’ challenge, with eve-
ryone cooking one evening meal. We became very competitive and ate very well. Evenings were rounded off nicely with the sauna, conveni- ently located in our Airbnb!
The team was determined to get some sort of fitness training out of the week. Much of the
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