Photo By: Menage a Moi

[Editor's note: To celebrate Matador Network's acquisition of Glimpse.org, we'll be republishing some of our favorite Glimpse articles over the next few weeks. This story originally appeared on Glimpse.org in April of 2004.]

One night over dinner, my Danish host father surprised me with some wonderful news.

“Next weekend, there is an orienteering race just north of Helsingør,” he said.

“Wow, Peter. That sounds like fun,” I said. “I hope you’ll do well. Can you pass the salt?”

“Of course it shall be fun,” he answered, with a devious smile. “We have entered you as well.”

I immediately forgot about the salt. “You entered me… to race?” My host parents, Peter and Karen-Margrethe Nielsen, had often told me about their adventures with the Skærmen Værløse Kommune orienteering team, and as I listened to their tales about eternal treks, drenched clothing, and upside-down maps, I always tried to restrain a smirk. But apparently Peter and Karen-Margrethe had interpreted my quiet, patronizing grins as wild enthusiasm for their favorite pastime.

“Yes. We will practice this Wednesday,” Peter continued. “The race is on Sunday.”

And that was that. I had a week to prepare.

In an orienteering competition, participants run through a wooded area, using a map and a compass to match topographical map icons with the terrain that surrounds them. As they navigate the course, they must locate a series of hidden checkpoints and insert a hand-held chip into an electronic data-recorder at each point. The person who finds all the checkpoints in the least amount of time claims victory.

I was a decent runner, but I was not accustomed to running and thinking at the same time. Wednesday arrived, and Peter and Karen-Margrethe escorted me into the woods behind their neighborhood to practice my skills. Peter gave me a compass and an old orienteering map and explained what each map symbol represented. At checkpoint seven, Karen-Margrethe decided to go home and start dinner because it was getting dark. Peter, on the other hand, insisted that we finish. In the semi-darkness, I located checkpoints 10 and 11, and he appeared satisfied.

Photo By: xtophe80

“Good. You should do fine on Sunday. Just try not to miss checkpoint nine during the race.”

“I missed checkpoint nine?” I asked.

“Yes. You missed checkpoint nine. Let’s go home and eat.”

Sunday morning arrived sooner than I had hoped. I sat in our kitchen, my New Balance trainers tapping the floor as I anxiously bounced my knee. Peter and Karen-Margrethe entered the room and my expectations for the day suddenly entered a new strata of bizarre: They looked like a pair of sprightly spacemen from a low-budget 1970s sci-fi movie. Their suits—long-sleeved tops and tapered trousers—were made of a forest green lycra-nylon blend, offset by electric blue flames on the arms, legs, and collar.

My facial expression must have betrayed my utter astonishment. Karen-Margrethe asked, “Oh, you like our clown outfits?”

We loaded up the camper van and drove to the race. All around, hundreds of competitors were setting up tents to protect themselves from the gathering rain. Much to my delight, everyone was outfitted like Peter and Karen-Margrethe, all in different shades of neon.

My name was called, and Peter led me to the starting line to give me some final words of encouragement. I joined the four fellow runners in my heat, each of whom would be following a different course. They were staring at their maps like a quartet of bloodthirsty high-schoolers hungry to begin the SATs. The starting clock sounded with a loud beep, and I saw four vivid streaks of color cross the starting line and disappear into the woods. I looked at my map one more time, noting a bright “this is where you are” dot. Gripping my compass for dear life, I scurried into Aggebo Hegn.

Before I knew it, I was talking to myself: “OK, path on right, path on right, path on right. There. OK, next: ravine. Ravine… ravine… there. All right. That means a checkpoint should be right… over… there?”

I picked my way through the damp forest for what seemed like ages. Eventually, I stumbled across a dense patch of ferns and spotted it—my first checkpoint! I timidly inserted my electric chip into the box and heard a beep beep as the machine relayed my data to the judges. Alone, with no one to share my joy, I pressed on.

The points were scattered across my map in a colorful array of dots, set against orange and green backdrops (fields and tree groves). There were also wavy red lines indicating elevation. At the map’s northern extreme was a paved roadway, and on the western extreme, a pasture that Peter had warned me about. “Do not climb the fence surrounding the pasture,” he had said.

Why, Peter?

“Because there are bulls in there. It is very dangerous.”

Amazingly, I eventually found the next checkpoint. To my further amazement, one by one, I proceeded to find the rest. They were sunk in gullies, concealed in gnarled roots and thick underbrush, tucked at the edges of clearings, and buried in vegetation at the banks of marshes. My chip beeped harmoniously in each metal box. Finally, I passed my chip through the receiver at point 14 and headed for the finish line. My shoes were soaked and my shirt was ripped, but as I crossed the line, I was thoroughly, utterly exhilarated.

I handed my time card to the judges and was unceremoniously given my final time: 53 minutes, one second. Fifty-three minutes, one second! I had finished in under an hour! I soon found Peter, covered in sweat and wiping the rain from his glasses, and proudly displayed my time: “Ohhh,” he said. “Fifty-three minutes. Well, it was a rather difficult course.”

As times were collected and posted on a large bulletin board nearby, I understood his lack of enthusiasm. My finger slid from the top times—just above 20 minutes—down and down until I reached the very bottom. There I was: third to last place in the “children, seniors, and newcomers” group. I had beaten a 12-year-old, and someone named Bjarke who never showed.

With that, as quickly as it had begun, my orienteering career came to a close. Ever since that fateful weekend, my fellow Americans enjoy harassing me when we get lost on the streets of Copenhagen, nudging me and proclaiming, “Let the Orienteering King lead the way!” But I just smile. Because deep down, I know that I spent my finest hour here in Denmark—no, strike that, my finest 53 minutes and one second, thank you very much—utterly lost in the woods of Aggebo Hegn.

Community Connection

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Tuesday

Leaving Las Leñas, we hear that Bariloche has had some good cold storms. But upon arrival we are greeted with rain, and a three-day forecast of rain, rain, and more rain—not only at lake level, but all the way to the top of the 7,000-foot peaks we have been planning to ski.

It is not a good sign.

Wednesday

It’s about 50 degrees. We take a 4×4 up a gnarly road of dirt and snow, as far as we can. We cross numerous overflowing rivers. Expectations for skiing are set appropriately low.

We abandon the vehicle, hike up the road through mud until we can put on our skins. Then we trek up through the woods, and eventually out onto windscoured death crust. “Powderquest” is not off to a strong start. We talk about nothing and laugh at the situation. To our surprise, the rain has stopped.

At the summit the wind is like nothing I’ve ever seen. The gusts are so strong the sound hurts our ears. At up to 70 mph they feel more like shock waves than gusts of wind.

Our guide, Jorge, goes into minor panic mode, and starts giving orders. We giggle at some of his directives, and take pictures. Which does not help his panic.

We try to curl up out of the wind. Jorge asks an important question: “You guys ski solid, yes?”

We wonder what would happen if the answer were “no.”

Not a winter wonderland.

We ski down survival-style, make it back to the hotel.

Thursday

We start at the base of Cerro Catedral, the local ski resort. For the East Coasters among you, picture the original Stowe gondola—in November. Here and there the dirt shows blemishes of month-old snow. The gondola looks poised to fall apart.

From the top of the gondola, we continue on skins to the summit, and emerge through a notch in the ridgeline. We look down at several thousand feet of windcrust. We can see the Frey Hut across the valley—2,000 feet down then another 1,000 feet up, beneath an array of peaks and spires.

The landscape is dominated by mud and rock. The peaks have snow, but it looks ugly. We don our 50-pound packs, pick our way down, skin our way up, and arrive at the hut.

Friday

In the night, it starts raining. It rains all day. Melissa is struggling to fight off a cold. In the afternoon three of us go out into the rain and skin about 1,500 feet up toward something that from a distance looks like snow. When we get there, we find about a half-centimeter of crunchy windcrust softened by rain. There is no visibility.

For a few hours we make something of nothing.

Back at the hut, the resident cat becomes our mascot.

Saturday

The storm rages. The rain turns to snow. In the morning we venture out, and get some fun runs in a mellow bowl, only about a 15-minute skin from the hut. In the afternoon, the snow gets heavier, and the visibility worsens. We laugh at each other struggling in the snow.

We manage to get in six runs.

Sunday

This is more like it.

We wake up to a winter wonderland: the sun shining, 8-10 inches of snow outside the hut. The Patagonia we had imagined finally reveals herself.

We leave the hut at 10, make three safe laps in the bowl. Beautifully wind-loaded powder. Blue-bird skies. Later, we rock-scramble up to a steeper pitch, only to find conditions too sketchy.

We ski only the lower half. But it’s steep. The powder is knee-deep and doesn’t slide. We close out the day with a skin up to the top of a wide-open chute. We summit at 6:15 and are back at the hut by 7, exhausted.

We manage to rally for our last dinner in the hut, and three bottles of wine later are providing entertainment for seven French guys that have just arrived. We estimate the numbers for the day: 9 hours of skiing, 5,000 feet of climbing, 1,500 jokes about our guide, the cat, and bodily functions. Endless virgin powder.

Monday

Jorge and I wake up early to ski the main chute in the valley before we have to skin out. Conditions look perfect, but as we approach the exit of the chute we dig a little pit to find an unstable windslab layer. We decide against it.

We continue up a safer route, and instead come down a more wide-open chute. The snow is knee-deep “polvo perfecto” (perfect powder). At the bottom, Melissa joins us. We skin up two-thirds of the chute and ski it again.

The trek home involves skiing down through trees, crossing a river, and then a 2,000 foot climb to another gap in the ridgeline. The last 100 feet is pure comedy, involving a combination of rock scrambling, ice climbing, boot packing, skinning, and otherwise just jamming feet into whatever, trying to get one more step toward the summit.

Going till the light is gone.

We arrive at the gap in the ridge at 4 o’clock, thoroughly impressed by how hardcore we are. Our guide fails to give us the accolades we have earned.

On the long descent back to the parking lot, the wheels come off completely. Mindy loses her ski. It heads down about a quarter mile without her. The last 500 vertical feet are mud and rock.

We arrive at the car at 6, bruised and exhausted, but somehow feeling that we got everything we wanted.

Jorge takes us to dinner. We stay out until 2:30 in the morning. Viva Argentina!

Community Connection

Have a trip report you’re interested in submitting? Send to david [at] matadornetwork.com.