The end of the season was alot of work and bad weather, and ofcourse alot of partying coming to the first of May and people realizing they won't be seing each other in the next 8 months or longer.
First of May wasn't that special, alot of people dressed up as animals and other funny things but then again people do that on Levi during almost the whole spring season so it felt more or less normal. Only differense was that people were partying harder than usual, and it was a fun weekend.
After two days of partying we headed to Riksgränsen in Sweden for some BC riding.
The carride takes about 5 hours from Levi and you get to go abroad, heh! The scenery in that area is amazing but a very disturbing thing was all the reindeer cadavers along the road, some in a thousand bits and some eaten to the bones by other animals.
When we got the the hotel in Riksgränsen we unpacked, ate some noodles and when hiking, at 11pm. At that time of the yer it never gets completely dark over there so you could ride durin the whole night if you wanted to, but nights are colder and after a warm day everything becomes more or less ice. First hike was about 150m and maybe 20m vertical haha! After that we checked out some higher "peaks", it was all more about hiking than quality riding but we had fun so who cares.
Riksgränsen day one!
Woke up around 9, ate some breakfast, got our passes and headed to the lifts, everyone were hyped to go riding Riksgränsen.
From the chairlift you can clearly see alot of awesome lines. Due to the hard snowfall they had during the week before followed by awesome weather during the weekend, everything had been ridden and all that was left was ice.
During theese following day I think we were around 15 people from Levi but I ended up riding with only Aki, Marika and Marja. The first rides were with almost everyone that came from Levi but then we headed hiking sinse there was no park what so ever and now pow near the slopes.
First hike was up the closest peak at around 1000+ meters above sealevel to a peak I think is called Nordalsfjället from where you can ride down to the lifts if you feel like it. Thats a really popular ride so you got nice tracks to hike on that side.
When we got up there we needed to choose which direction to ride to since you could ride in all directions. But ofcourse you had to spend some times taking pictures on the top of our first hike:
Behind me is the mark of the highest point and Marika taking a picture of the Norwegian fjord you can see behind us. The sign or poster is actually a recruitment poster for the swedish army, laff!
We ended up riding down the other side of the mountain, we knew the hike back to the resort would be alot longer but it was completely untouched so we desided it was worth it, and it was.
I actually have some video footage of one of the first runs, unstable filming etc. so desided to just upload the raw footage.
The point is to show where we spend most of our first day hiking a mellow run in the sun. (awesome rime by the way)
There was 5-10cm of powder on a harder layer of snow, it felt really good even tho deeper pow would have been nice, The rest of the week we actually went to other places with abit deeper pow.
After hiking almost the whole day everyone had a hard time even staying awake after getting to the hotel, I don't think I managed to stay awake past 12 a single night. (now I'm not counting the night we got there when we were out hiking until 1am or something)
Riksgränsen day 2
In the morning I had a talk with one of the heli-ski guides who when I asked him told me that you get to ride the same stuff as you do going on a heli-ski trip if you hike the peaks around Riksgränsen. We still wanted to go further than the day before so we rented a snowmobile, funny thing is that there were 4 of us and we rented one, this actually made it more fun.
Aki had to make a detour with the thing to get about halfway up the mountain so the rest of us took the lift up and we met at the restaurant at the slopes.
From this point Aki and Marika were on the snowmobile and the pulled me and Marja, this worked really well and was really fun.
The weather was still perfect, just cold enough not to get slushy and sunny the whole day. Giving each others rides to the top with the snowmobile was fun both for the ones riding and the ones driving. A truly legendary day.
We got back around 5 or 6, made some dinner and made a trip to Narvik, Norway. Narvik was nice, I think all of Norway is but still... Some old ladys celebrating something wanted me to take like a zillion pics of the with their cameras and as a reward I got a red rose, very romantic gesture.
We checked out the scenery, bought beer, cider, candy and Marja bought a toy and then we headed back to Sweden.
Riksgränsen day 3
Still snowmobiling up and down the hills. Well, actually not that many times since we started of the day with a almost 4 hours long hike to a peak something like 1542m above sealevel on the norwegian side of the border. First part of the hike was trough a ravine or whatever you wat to call it, the sun was reflecting from every direction and it was hotter than hot. On the way we saw this jump that some moron had built, crazy narrow takeoff, steep as f and then almost flat so that the g-force will throw you to the ground. Might have been the reason why there were only two tracks on the landing. The guy who jumped and the guy who promised to jump if his buddy jumps ;)
After a while we got of the ravine or small valley and it got steeper, then steeped and even more steep. I was so hyped halfway up when I realized that there actually was quite alot of pow at that altitude already, this was going to be a legendary ride.
Halfway!
I will continue this post when I got more time....
.....that will be today.
So finally getting to the top of the mountain after an almost 4 hour hike the feeling was more than rewarding, and the view absolutely breathtaking.
It seemed like every time we hiked we spend almost one hour at the top just fooling around taking ALOT of pictures.
Since I got lots of pictures from this trip I was thinking of putting them all up on flickr or something. I'll check that out later today.
After almost an hour we strapped in and headed down the mountain. I desided to pick a steeper line which ended up in a small bowl because almost the whole line was in the shade almost during the whole day and I had a hunch that there would be deeper pow within that area.
I was right, I had deep and soft powder the whole run. At the end it got really steep, I had to remember what the face looked like since I remember there being some small drops with rocks in the landing etc. The run went well and I was so hyped when I got to the bottom I couldn't find words for the feeling, it was just amazing.
We got back kinda late and as usual everyone were all out of juice and kinda fell asleep wherever. This was awesome, spending the whole day outside hiking and riding and then just fall asleep when you get home and sleep better than ever, wake up, and do it again.
Riksgränsen day 4!
We had to clean our room before breakfast because they wanted the inspect it before we could leave. Then we packed everything in the car and went riding.
We had no sled today so we just hit the groomers and did some easier hikes on Nordalsfjället. As every day before it was sunny, we basically took it easy and had some fun before we had to head back to Levi.
Last days at Levi
Last days at Levi can be summed easily into saying that they were days of partying with people you'll prolly run into the next winter the next time if even then.
There was the Levi Camp351 happening at the flontslope park, I went there and had some fun on the jumps even if the park was in terrible shape cos of the warm weather and rain. It was still fun to hit some bethods and rocket airs. Oh yeah, I got my new boots on the last day of riding which made riding abit scetchy.
It was a nice ending to the season with 2 days of partying, live music and good company. But at the same time it felt good to leave Levi for a while at least.
