Summer shreddin' – FolgefonnaIn 2008 Document got stuck in at the Folgefonna Summer Snowboard Camp, near Bergen in Norway. Here is an excerpt that will either make you run in terror or pack your bags today.
It's hot and I am sweating; straining under 60 kilos of assorted baggage. The great British holiday season has descended on Gatwick with force and I am stuck right in the thick of it.
'What's that?'
'A snowboard.'
The disgruntled desk clerk saunters off to ask her perplexed manager how to deal with this spatial conundrum. It's summer but I want to go snowboarding, why does this always feel like such a big deal?
And so begins this digger's tale. Kind of. It actually began many years ago in an old and bedraggled copy of Document Snowboard. I remember reading a tale of midnight sunshine, handcrafted halfpipes and moonshine. The fabled destination: Folgefonna, on the north west flank of Norway.
Folgefonna is a veteran amongst summer snowboard camps. It comprises a camp area in farmers' fields just outside of Jondal where a crew of immigrant workers cater to the needs of the few hundred campers in attendance each week. As many of the traditional summer snowboard camps once did, Folgefonna offers a kind of shred-for-free for the die-hard riders out there that just can't say no. Not even when it's 25C in the shade, your knees are crying for rest and your boots resemble a pair wetsuit booties after dawn patrol. For the simple penance of a few hours labour each day the hard working can find themselves bedded (don't hold out for sheets, pillows, blankets or anything else you might need), fed (you want to have seriously overdosed on salad, greens, fruit and all things good before you come here as a diet of pot noodles and chocolate spread sandwiches awaits). But most importantly you can snowboard.
Bergen
Flights are pretty easy to Bergen. I went with SAS as they offered the most reasonable attitude to excess baggage I could find at the time. Flying in at sun down, over the myriad of fjords and lakes that swamp the Norwegian hills, scooping precariously close to slatted houses before dropping to the runway conveniently cut into the thick of it all, is an impressive experience.
While strictly not far from Bergen our destination, the feeder hamlet of Jondal, was a tricky journey to negotiate. I scanned the downtown bus timetables without a clue until a longhaired metaller wheeling a snowboard bag sidled up on my left. Not making a sound I watched carefully and tried to remember which bus he had settled on before following, from a safe distance.
Eskil, as it turned out, didn't have any better idea how to get to Foglefonna than I.
Home Sweet Home
I had a pretty good idea what to expect from workers' accommodation, having survived three weeks of blistering Norwegian heat two years previously, even doing without running water as the well ran dry. Miraculously, I had managed to come no better prepared the second time round and as I was introduced to my bed for the week and my room mate, Håvard Myrvold, it dawned on me that I had brought no sleeping bag and the stained mattress looked like a scabies infection waiting to pounce.
Our homestead was an old wooden house situated halfway along the road from Jondal up to the Folgefonn glacier. It was a picturesque spot, bordered by a huge lake complete with water ski jump and enough vegetation to make it the perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes. Yup, I had also forgotten the mosquitoes.
The whole crew shared this one house, sharing rooms and some sleeping in the lounge. Only our snowcat driver, Geoff Bostwick, secured his own room. He's been coming to Folgefonna for the last five or six years and attributes his career in part to this place. Due to working graveyard shifts that often see him driving though the night, he gets his own room, with a view.
The attractions of Folgefonna are certainly not creature comforts. As a worker one of the most interesting parts of a stay here is the incredible journey of your fellow workers. From local Norwegians, through to travelling Yanks, Kanooks, Latvians, Estonians, Swedes, Poles, Russians and Brits; the nuts and bolts of this organisation are as diverse as quick change at Tottenham Court Road.
As a rider you can't better the regular 9am to 4pm shred -
almost unheard of at summer camps around the globe, which normally have to close by lunch as the snow turns to a slush. But for a photographer the beauty of this place is the light. It doesn't get dark until 11ish in mid-summer and even then it's more of an extended dusk that turns immediately to dawn at about 2am, offering really big shooting windows to catch the sunsets and rises.
A digger's lot
My man on the ground and head shaper, Emil Fossheim, was full of his usual over enthusiastic cheer mixed the usual gripes and pains of running the show here. As he collected me from the ferry terminal in his Ute he ran through the usual trials and tribulations, 'The diggers were slackers, the diggers were hungover, too many of the diggers had bust their knees over-shooting jumps...' But he was also stoked on his pride and joy, the park.
One of the most comprehensive summer set-ups we've seen. From simple down bar rails, mini corner jumps, pole jam logs to the infamous mega-booters, there is a little something for everyone. And it is incredible to see how quickly something special can be whipped up. When the Action Horse film crew rolled into town for a mellow summer session, Emil and Geoff had, within the day, constructed a 20m butter box for them to session.
But maintaining this quantity of features on a daily basis is a big task. And that is the job of the diggers. Perhaps due to it's relatively low altitude, or its proximity to the sea the Folgefonn glacier is under permanent harassment from a warm breeze. So much so that often the diggers will role up to see a rail freshly dug in and solid as nails the night before, to be on its side roots laid bare by the morning. Luckily for riders there appear to be no salt restrictions in Norway and this magic cure of park shaping (like aspirin on a hangover) gets thrown on to the jumps, landings, take-offs and supports of the rails morning and night. Being a good year for the park Emil estimates we are dishing out a half tonne of salt a day here compared to nearly a tonne in 2006 when the sun didn't sleep for three weeks straight.
To have the work done in an hour and have all the features ready to ride by 10am when the campers start getting frisky is still a mean feat and it can often take a full crew of 15 shapers the full hour to make it ready in time. Which begs the question, when all the camp shapers head home in July, how the hell did Emil maintain the park by himself for the rest of the summer?
Shred time
My first day was a classic west Norway washout. Sharing the same weather systems as the city-that-never-stops-raining (Bergen), bad weather days are one thing this place doesn't do well. The park becomes an impossible mosh pit of zero visibility. The diggers baled early but still sodden from the rain Emil hit the garage and set to work on welding and grinding a new rail he was working on for the park. Does this man never stop?
Everybody needs a set of wheels
You gotta have a set of wheels in a place like this. There's 40 miles of tarmac spread like one massive piece of soggy spaghetti around the hills, fjords, lakes trees and farmers fields, and the twice daily bus route is just not enough for the diggers. But hat is one journey I won't miss; bundled in the back, spinning round the corners as an over-zealous, broken-kneed Estonian snowboarder, Mark Duubas, rags that bus through switchback after switchback. To his credit we always arrived safe and sound and after seeing photos and sites of earlier road/cliff infractions by less fortunate or more foolhardy drivers it was always a treat to step out onto the dusty dry tarmac of the glacier car park unscathed.
A break in the clouds
Despite the first day's wash out the remainder of my trip was graced with blue skies and perfect conditions. I hit the trail with a small group of Estonian and Latvian riders on day two. We hiked a little way to session a cliff set deep in the snow. Ridiculously I have no idea how safe hiking around the terrain at Folgefonna is. Normally you'd never venture out of the marked runs on a glacier for fear of falling to the bottom of the earth but either we were lulled into a false sense of confidence or the rocks sticking out of the snow were a sign the terrain is safe here (maybe check with some trustworthy locals if you ever find yourself in a similar situation).
Shaping seemed easier this year. Maybe it is a few less features in the park, mellower weather conditions or just Emil cracking the whip but it seems the diggers don't need to spend as long in the evenings re-building the park. Evenings would be spent re-cuperating from the day, heading down to Spa by the fjord to grab any vital supplies or heading to the campsite to hit up the skate ramps and trampolines –
or as in the case of Canada day, necking whiskey and frontflipping into the lake outside the house, unless of course your name is Geoff and you are still busy grooming the park to 3am.
With the sun in a full effect the week was turning out to be more than perfect and more than a photographer could have wished for. We'd already exploited one night session, staying up and shredding one of the bigger jumps to nearly midnight, or until the landing became too hard and the take-off too dented. The session was predominantly for the Protest team but a few diggers and a few skiers had infiltrated their ranks, and it was a joy to watch Kire, Brandon, Håvard, Odd, Emil Johannessen and Peter Yastrebkov dropping bombs into the night.
But it's not all work. When the weather is on at Fonna, in addition to night sessions there is something else you have to do, hit the beach. It may sound absurd but Jondal boasts a beach with diving boards into the fjord and provides the perfect backdrop for an evening barbecue. Particularly if you have some handy Estonian fishermen in your team to provide freshly caught produce.
Know before you go:
Folgefonna Snowboard Camp
21st June - 10th July 2010
Fly to Bergen then take a bus to Jondal. One good thing about Norway is while timetables may be unreadable the locals tend to speak perfect English and be more than willing to help out
Fly
Norwegian Air Shuttle: www.norwegian.no
Ryan Air: www.ryanair.com
Wizz Air: www.wizzair.com
Wheels
Nor-way Bussekspress
www.nor-way.no
HSD Bus
www.hsd.no
NSB (Norwegian State Railways)
www.nsb.no
Check these guys out:
Words and photography by James Bryant
Related stories:
Posted by Online Editor - Mon, 26/04/2010 - 11:35am
In 2008 Document got stuck in at the Folgefonna Summer Snowboard Camp, near Bergen in Norway. Here is an excerpt that will either make you run in terror or pack your bags today.
It's hot and I am sweating; straining under 60 kilos of assorted baggage. The great British holiday season has descended on Gatwick with force and I am stuck right in the thick of it.
'What's that?'
'A snowboard.'
The disgruntled desk clerk saunters off to ask her perplexed manager how to deal with this spatial conundrum. It's summer but I want to go snowboarding, why does this always feel like such a big deal?
And so begins this digger's tale. Kind of. It actually began many years ago in an old and bedraggled copy of Document Snowboard. I remember reading a tale of midnight sunshine, handcrafted halfpipes and moonshine. The fabled destination: Folgefonna, on the north west flank of Norway.
Folgefonna is a veteran amongst summer snowboard camps. It comprises a camp area in farmers' fields just outside of Jondal where a crew of immigrant workers cater to the needs of the few hundred campers in attendance each week. As many of the traditional summer snowboard camps once did, Folgefonna offers a kind of shred-for-free for the die-hard riders out there that just can't say no. Not even when it's 25C in the shade, your knees are crying for rest and your boots resemble a pair wetsuit booties after dawn patrol. For the simple penance of a few hours labour each day the hard working can find themselves bedded (don't hold out for sheets, pillows, blankets or anything else you might need), fed (you want to have seriously overdosed on salad, greens, fruit and all things good before you come here as a diet of pot noodles and chocolate spread sandwiches awaits). But most importantly you can snowboard.
Bergen
Flights are pretty easy to Bergen. I went with SAS as they offered the most reasonable attitude to excess baggage I could find at the time. Flying in at sun down, over the myriad of fjords and lakes that swamp the Norwegian hills, scooping precariously close to slatted houses before dropping to the runway conveniently cut into the thick of it all, is an impressive experience.
While strictly not far from Bergen our destination, the feeder hamlet of Jondal, was a tricky journey to negotiate. I scanned the downtown bus timetables without a clue until a longhaired metaller wheeling a snowboard bag sidled up on my left. Not making a sound I watched carefully and tried to remember which bus he had settled on before following, from a safe distance.
Eskil, as it turned out, didn't have any better idea how to get to Foglefonna than I.
Home Sweet Home
I had a pretty good idea what to expect from workers' accommodation, having survived three weeks of blistering Norwegian heat two years previously, even doing without running water as the well ran dry. Miraculously, I had managed to come no better prepared the second time round and as I was introduced to my bed for the week and my room mate, Håvard Myrvold, it dawned on me that I had brought no sleeping bag and the stained mattress looked like a scabies infection waiting to pounce.
Our homestead was an old wooden house situated halfway along the road from Jondal up to the Folgefonn glacier. It was a picturesque spot, bordered by a huge lake complete with water ski jump and enough vegetation to make it the perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes. Yup, I had also forgotten the mosquitoes.
The whole crew shared this one house, sharing rooms and some sleeping in the lounge. Only our snowcat driver, Geoff Bostwick, secured his own room. He's been coming to Folgefonna for the last five or six years and attributes his career in part to this place. Due to working graveyard shifts that often see him driving though the night, he gets his own room, with a view.
The attractions of Folgefonna are certainly not creature comforts. As a worker one of the most interesting parts of a stay here is the incredible journey of your fellow workers. From local Norwegians, through to travelling Yanks, Kanooks, Latvians, Estonians, Swedes, Poles, Russians and Brits; the nuts and bolts of this organisation are as diverse as quick change at Tottenham Court Road.
As a rider you can't better the regular 9am to 4pm shred -
almost unheard of at summer camps around the globe, which normally have to close by lunch as the snow turns to a slush. But for a photographer the beauty of this place is the light. It doesn't get dark until 11ish in mid-summer and even then it's more of an extended dusk that turns immediately to dawn at about 2am, offering really big shooting windows to catch the sunsets and rises.
A digger's lot
My man on the ground and head shaper, Emil Fossheim, was full of his usual over enthusiastic cheer mixed the usual gripes and pains of running the show here. As he collected me from the ferry terminal in his Ute he ran through the usual trials and tribulations, 'The diggers were slackers, the diggers were hungover, too many of the diggers had bust their knees over-shooting jumps...' But he was also stoked on his pride and joy, the park.
One of the most comprehensive summer set-ups we've seen. From simple down bar rails, mini corner jumps, pole jam logs to the infamous mega-booters, there is a little something for everyone. And it is incredible to see how quickly something special can be whipped up. When the Action Horse film crew rolled into town for a mellow summer session, Emil and Geoff had, within the day, constructed a 20m butter box for them to session.
But maintaining this quantity of features on a daily basis is a big task. And that is the job of the diggers. Perhaps due to it's relatively low altitude, or its proximity to the sea the Folgefonn glacier is under permanent harassment from a warm breeze. So much so that often the diggers will role up to see a rail freshly dug in and solid as nails the night before, to be on its side roots laid bare by the morning. Luckily for riders there appear to be no salt restrictions in Norway and this magic cure of park shaping (like aspirin on a hangover) gets thrown on to the jumps, landings, take-offs and supports of the rails morning and night. Being a good year for the park Emil estimates we are dishing out a half tonne of salt a day here compared to nearly a tonne in 2006 when the sun didn't sleep for three weeks straight.
To have the work done in an hour and have all the features ready to ride by 10am when the campers start getting frisky is still a mean feat and it can often take a full crew of 15 shapers the full hour to make it ready in time. Which begs the question, when all the camp shapers head home in July, how the hell did Emil maintain the park by himself for the rest of the summer?
Shred time
My first day was a classic west Norway washout. Sharing the same weather systems as the city-that-never-stops-raining (Bergen), bad weather days are one thing this place doesn't do well. The park becomes an impossible mosh pit of zero visibility. The diggers baled early but still sodden from the rain Emil hit the garage and set to work on welding and grinding a new rail he was working on for the park. Does this man never stop?
Everybody needs a set of wheels
You gotta have a set of wheels in a place like this. There's 40 miles of tarmac spread like one massive piece of soggy spaghetti around the hills, fjords, lakes trees and farmers fields, and the twice daily bus route is just not enough for the diggers. But hat is one journey I won't miss; bundled in the back, spinning round the corners as an over-zealous, broken-kneed Estonian snowboarder, Mark Duubas, rags that bus through switchback after switchback. To his credit we always arrived safe and sound and after seeing photos and sites of earlier road/cliff infractions by less fortunate or more foolhardy drivers it was always a treat to step out onto the dusty dry tarmac of the glacier car park unscathed.
A break in the clouds
Despite the first day's wash out the remainder of my trip was graced with blue skies and perfect conditions. I hit the trail with a small group of Estonian and Latvian riders on day two. We hiked a little way to session a cliff set deep in the snow. Ridiculously I have no idea how safe hiking around the terrain at Folgefonna is. Normally you'd never venture out of the marked runs on a glacier for fear of falling to the bottom of the earth but either we were lulled into a false sense of confidence or the rocks sticking out of the snow were a sign the terrain is safe here (maybe check with some trustworthy locals if you ever find yourself in a similar situation).
Shaping seemed easier this year. Maybe it is a few less features in the park, mellower weather conditions or just Emil cracking the whip but it seems the diggers don't need to spend as long in the evenings re-building the park. Evenings would be spent re-cuperating from the day, heading down to Spa by the fjord to grab any vital supplies or heading to the campsite to hit up the skate ramps and trampolines – or as in the case of Canada day, necking whiskey and frontflipping into the lake outside the house, unless of course your name is Geoff and you are still busy grooming the park to 3am.
With the sun in a full effect the week was turning out to be more than perfect and more than a photographer could have wished for. We'd already exploited one night session, staying up and shredding one of the bigger jumps to nearly midnight, or until the landing became too hard and the take-off too dented. The session was predominantly for the Protest team but a few diggers and a few skiers had infiltrated their ranks, and it was a joy to watch Kire, Brandon, Håvard, Odd, Emil Johannessen and Peter Yastrebkov dropping bombs into the night.
But it's not all work. When the weather is on at Fonna, in addition to night sessions there is something else you have to do, hit the beach. It may sound absurd but Jondal boasts a beach with diving boards into the fjord and provides the perfect backdrop for an evening barbecue. Particularly if you have some handy Estonian fishermen in your team to provide freshly caught produce.
Know before you go:
Folgefonna Snowboard Camp
21st June - 10th July 2010
Fly to Bergen then take a bus to Jondal. One good thing about Norway is while timetables may be unreadable the locals tend to speak perfect English and be more than willing to help out
Fly
Norwegian Air Shuttle: www.norwegian.no
Ryan Air: www.ryanair.com
Wizz Air: www.wizzair.com
Wheels
Nor-way Bussekspress
www.nor-way.no
HSD Bus
www.hsd.no
NSB (Norwegian State Railways)
www.nsb.no
Check these guys out:
Words and photography by James Bryant