Land of the Midnight Sun

30 June 2015

During this time of year in Norway, since it’s so far north, the sun doesn’t really set. Even in the middle of the night, there's still plenty of sunlight which can making getting to sleep challenging.

23:00 and still very bright out

After a hearty breakfast, we headed down to Sauraai, which has relevant terrain to the long and middle JWOC races. The training started off with a windmill exercise, then a memory-O followed by another windmill. When the team finished, we headed back to the cabins for lunch and a siesta.

Warming up

We then drove down to Juvstaul, a map similar to the JWOC middle. We did a long course with several different sections, beginning with a line-O in a very complex area. Lots of contour detail, small marshes and gullies, and several splotches of green slash. The next exercises were only going on a bearing, no compass, and then only contours.

The training course at Juvstaul

Most of the map, aside from where the line-O took place, was made up of a few large, shallow-slopping hills with marshes, streams, and boulders littering them. The vegetation was much thicker than Sauraai so the visibility was lower.

Alexander Bergstrom

Michael Svoboda

Jan Erik Naess

After training, we went back to the cabins and went for dinner. In the cafeteria, there are several stuffed animals placed on shelves all around the building. As Emma S was trying to get back to her spot on the bench, she accidentally knocked over a poor stuffed grouse (pheasant?), causing him to plummet onto the table. Between forgetting where the bird was originally placed and uncontrollable laughter, we had quite a difficult time putting him back up.

If anyone can properly identify the black bird, they get a cookie!