Days 1-3 were used to teach us the basics of cross-country skiing and mountain survival, such as recognising hypothermia and how to make snow holes. These days got us all used to the techniques we would practice to move and live in the mountains on the planned 3 day expedition. By this stage we were pretty confident in our abilities as ski ninjas and we packed for the exped the next day with relative confidence.

Morning came all too soon, after fitting our skis and lumbering our bergans on, we (typically) set off uphill at pace. The day of skiing passed relatively drama free, except for a few aching shoulders and the fact that yours truly discovered that he had his skis on the wrong feet! We covered around 17km (almost all of which uphill!) on Day 1 and finally got to our bivvy-site. We dug our tent holes in the snow and got our tents up, which was all too well as a blizzard was starting to close in on us.

Day 2 started with excitement at the anticipation of digging and sleeping in snow holes at our next bivvy-site. We set off at a good pace and arrived at the snowhole site at around lunch time. We thought this timing odd and that the MLs had gone soft (ha-ha!) by not making us ski more, little did we know of the work that was required to make a proper snow hole! Nonetheless we got cracking, under a barrage of cries of "come on lads, get in there and get angry with it!" from our compassionate instructor WO2 Turner. After who knows how many hours of digging we sorted our admin out and got our heads down, in what was a surprisingly warm shelter.

Day 3 of the exped started in true Danny Daniels fashion, with a heart (and body) warming rendition of Father Abraham and a 3km ski to a small hut for some waffles and a hot chocolate. After what may have been the best breakfast ever, we started our short 7km (mostly) downhill journey back to Haugastol and the warmth and comforts of the hotel. But for some of us skiing down the mountain was harder than skiing up it! And a few of us performed some really acrobatic face plants on the way down. We wrapped up the trip with an enjoyable day of downhill skiing at the Geilo ski resort and yet some more spectacular acrobatics (rumour has it even from WO2 Turner!).

I would like to thank the people that made this awesome experience possible for all of the cadets that participated: Capt. Danny Daniels, WO2 Bob Turner, Lt. Louise Marshall and Lt. Sam Douglas-Beveridge. Thanks for giving us all this opportunity and I hope the trip is just as successful in the future.