My Adventure: by Morten Tobias Rostille
My first big, and perhaps most important adventure happened when I was 23 years old, when I crossed Norway’s Finmarksvidda in the pitch dark of the polar winter. Prior to this trip that took me a full month, I didn’t have much experience to look back on – some weekends here and there. Yet, what I lacked in experience I sure made up for with young hardheaded, immature courage.
I set out in minus 45 celsius with a garbage bag as a vapor barrier, and with two synthetic sleeping bags that I layered, in a solo tent. Finnmarksvidda is Norway’s largest mountain plateau, home to the indigenous Sapmi people. It is a vast and harsh landscape, with little activity in the deep of winter except the odd reindeer herder. From day one I was skiing in deep snow, often knee deep. The most difficult day I had I spent 11 hours of struggling through the snow only to get 2,4 kilometers further. This was in December and the sun doesn’t rise above the horizon, and we are only given a few hours of dusk each day. I was saving the batteries for my head torch so mostly just fumbled around in all the deep snow in the dark.
Sure, there were some nice experiences, such as seeing the Northern lights light up the sky, but in general this trip wasn’t nice, it was cold and it was hard. 23-year old me probably told all my friends it was amazing and tried to make it way cooler than it really was, when it in fact was one month of being cold and alone in the dark. Why I consider this my big adventure in life isn’t about where it was or the likes it got me on instagram. It’s the challenge this trip gave me, and that I handled it. It was my way into a profession I have come to love, and it was the first big thing I properly mastered. It was about me being in the right space at the right time in life.
Advice to Others:
Since this trip, many years and many kilometers on skis have gone by. I have been in far more wild and desolate areas, skied to the South Pole and crossed Greenland. However, as cheesy as it may sound, I am convinced it isn’t so much about the destination, it’s about the journey. That first trip crossing Finmarksvidda was when something inside me clicked for the first time. I was never very good at school, and didn’t really bother trying that hard either. But then I had this idea of doing a long winter expedition, I prepared to precision, and endured, and kept going for far longer than I had ever bothered in anything before. And with what was probably more luck than I care to admit, I succeeded – giving me a feeling of achievement that was very novel, and very nice. That feeling is the same no matter where you ski to.
Today I am quite a few years older and hopefully a little wiser, and I surely wouldn’t advise anyone without experience to set out on the Finmarksvidda trip alone. The ethos of the expeditions I run at Rostille Guiding (http://rostilleguiding.com) is to give people the same sense of achievement, though without that risk only a cocky 23-year old would accept. If you have a little dream or keep thinking about wanting to go on an expedition or even just learn to ski, go for it! There are so many guides, and great companies with a ton of options to help you go anywhere you want. And if you’re a cocky 23-year old reading this, you won’t listen to me anyways – then my only advice is, bring an InReach or satellite phone.
