"I always did whatever I liked," she said, "but now I really can do it."

(Quote by A.A. Milne from Once on a Time)

After my last exam on Saturday, Dad and I headed for the mountains, looking to get one more good ski day in. In Norway, there is always snow - you just have to look high enough. Be the (almost) locals that we are, we drove 4 hours south and west to Trollstigen, a paved mountain pass that tops out at  850 meters. This is plenty high enough to still have good snow at this time of year. We generally do a ski trip up a mountain from Trollstigen every year, and usually it looks like this:

Finnan, 2010

Alnestind, 2009

This year it looked like this:

The skis: all dress up and no where to go. As you can see, there was no lack of snow.

Although the weather forecast mentioned clouds, it completely failed to predict the height of the clouds. Mountains: 1; Molly and Dad: 0. We started to follow some ski tracks up towards Breitind, our original goal for the day, but the fog was so relentlessly thick that we turned fairly quickly.

This river is cool looking. I wouldn't recommend swimming in it, however.

Total whiteout

We then drove into Åndalsnes town, determined at least to get some exercise out of our long drive, and powerhiked up Nesaksla. The trail up this small peak is 715 meters of practically straight up - and then down. It's a short hike, but brutal enough that my legs were smarting the day afterward.

Dad: superstoked to be out hiking.

Nesaksla is really right above the town of Åndalsnes, which makes the view of the town and the fjord pretty incredible. Knowing the mountains in the area, it would be even more spectacular on a nice day.

Åndalsnes and the fjord

Towards the top we ended up partially in the fog again.

Topping out on Nesaksla.

But everyone agreed it had been a lovely day out.

And now, for something completely different.

Since Sunday I've packed up all of my stuff, moved most of it to my parent's house, and moved some of it to Oslo where I'll be for the next six weeks. This is the fourth time I've move in the last three years, and every time I am equally shocked at the amount of stuff I own. This always makes me go on an antimaterialistic raid, in which I attempt to 'get rid of all of my stuff'. This time I gave 12 bags of clothes to Fretex (the Salvation Army), which is pretty good. I still ended up taking the train looking like this:

Loaded down: this is totally as heavy as it looks.

Since I fully intend on taking Casper the Mountain Bike with me to France, I think I might have to take less than all the stuff in the pictures -  but it's really hard picking stuff for a whole year! Six and a half weeks and counting.

- the Wild Bazilchuk