Maja in Norway: The queen / Dronninga

Last Sunday I finally got to have a go at the queen, a majestic name for a summit right? With nice weather, good companionship, just enough snow, low risk for avalanches and enough skiing training through the winter the trip should be nothing but a joy. And it almost was=) The trip starts at the bottom of Viromdalen (only a 20 minute drive from home) and the first part is up a hillside with a quite a bit of vegetation. Luckily the late snowfall made it possible to ski almost from the parking lot and we only had to take the skies on and off a couple of times in the beginning.
I did this trip with my dad who is in very good shape, and from the pace he started in it was no doubt this would be no slow trip, but a good exercise.
Due to my father's tempo we soon came above the tree line and we could see the 800-meter-hill getting closer. The queen is a very popular and almost famous trip and the tracks we fallowed made it clear we were not the only one thinking it was a good day for skiing. Just before we started on the hill we past a large crowd of tourists having a break, maybe gathering strength before the hardest part, and we got a good cheer=)
(Er alltid gøy å høre "hu-og-hei" heiing, selv om jeg ikke er student lenger)
Apart from some wind we had not had any difficulties so far, but a short time after we started on the 800-meter-hill I realized the hill was going to be more demanding than planned: it was sticky snow! There was nothing to do but to carry on, and take one step at the time, and so I did:) My clever dad had brought a scraper with him so we could remove the snow from underneath my skies for the last part of the trip. Which was really sweet as the last couple kilometres are rather flat.
Already at the top of the 800-meter-hill I was amazed by the fantastic view I got, and standing at the summit after three hours of hard work, I just looked around and enjoyed it all:) Standing at the summit at 1816 masl it was not hard to understand the name of the mountain, it really deserves it! It was no wind so we could take our time without getting cold.
Skiing down from Dronninga was very nice indeed, but my thighs were hurting really bad before I reached the bottom of the 800-meter-hill:p It was quite challenging getting down the hillside since there were little snow and it was rotten, and we ended up carrying our skies the last part of the trip.
All in all an amazing trip which I recommend to anyone who enjoy using skies both up and down mountains!