Umbukta to Kvitsteindalstunet. 26km 8hrs. Wind; Tireless, tiring, unrelenting wind. I wake and I’m excited about the day ahead. I feel rested, and the quiet hunger that sits within me these days is silent, sated. I’ve heard wonderful things about the Rana cabins, and the next few weeks should be very beautiful. As I shoulder my pack I notice the difference to the weight 6 days food makes. Today won’t be light, or fast. I get a few hundred meters away, trudging through deep sugar snow when Selvas from the fjellstue appears on his scooter. Neither of us speak each other’s language but we’ve become friends in a day- he tells me to follow and he’ll make a track out of the woods for me! I could hug him He whizzes off and I start making progress. The track gives me my first km for free, now I have to climb up to a col at 1000m. The wind is strong, from the SE and I have to head E… it’s increasingly hard work. The horizon is lost in a white haze of shifting, swirling, eye-stinging snow on the move. The world around me is alive, clutching at my rucksack, snapping at my skis, pushing me, shoving me and reducing my focus of attention to the immediate. -15C and this wind is unforgiving of mistakes and I have to plan ahead the order of everything I do before I stop, even for a minute. To get too cold here would be a dangerous mistake. I fight my way into the wind, my tracks if not immediately obliterated by the wind are surely modern art. For a moment I consider whether I might just have found my limit… but I keep going and find a way to crawl doggedly over the col and feel the terrain start to relent beneath my skis… the worst is over… but I can’t relax until I gain the woods many kms below and the welcome sight of the DNT cabin.