Preparations!

^22-01-11

After a good long ´break´, just being home, lazy and relaxing, I’m up for new adventures. Having mellowed over a rough plan the last weeks, I’m finally ready to get going!

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So today is a last day of intense preparations:
find and pack all my stuff, and sort out food and other replacements (blister plasters for example);
as well as fine-tuning the route, looking at preparation status of cross country skiing tacks (relatively ´bad´ after the warm weather and rain the last days/week), checking iskarta – the website giving guidance on ice safety for crossing lakes (all small and medium lakes should be frozen and crossable; but I’m not sure if I can and will trust this), weather forecast (looking good-ish for the first days at least), booking huts from DNT (Norways hiking association), and loading hut locations into my Garmin GPS for safety.

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And this is THE PLAN:
I will cross-country ski and hike in a wide circle around Oslo, through all the parts of Oslomarka – the green forest belt that is enclosing Oslo (almost) everywhere but on the south where Oslofjord, the sea, is.
My starting point is near the town of Ski – to be exact at Kråkstad station – southeast of Oslo.
I will then go roughly north, crossing Sørmarka and Østmarka in 3 days to get to a train station in Groruddalen – the stretch of ´civilisation´ (that is, Oslo’s suburb) along the train tracks towards Lillestrøm and north.
I will then continue to cross Gjelleråsen and Lillomarka in 2 short and lazy days, to Movatn train station.
And finally I will do a wide arch trough Nordmarka and Krokskogen over 4 days, and then 1 day across Sørmarka.
The end is planned to be some or other train station near Asker… depending on how the snow / track conditions looks like.

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As usual, I have a relatively detailed plan, but will not hesitate to change it if conditions or my motivation changes. There is plenty of options to shortcut out, or to do add-ons and detours to various hill tops or other points of interest. So we’ll see how this adventure turns out. ; )

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