Who we are: this is our story

My name is Kari Gomez Augestad, and as you can guess, I have a half Norwegian name because my mother is Norwegian. She was born in Oslo and was passionate about alpine skiing. My mother was one of the first women to have a ski pass at the small ski resort of Kirkerudbakken, which today is one of the centres from which most of the Norwegian team alpine ski world cup racers emerge. She taught me, together with my grandfather, to know and come to love snow, those white flakes falling from the sky.

Winter, snow, cold… For some, like me, these are the things in nature that most excite me, because it means I can put on my skis and enjoy the pleasure of going up and down the snowy mountains.

 

How did I learn to love the snow?

I remember when I was a little girl, my mother would take us out of school every year to take us to Norway during the month of February, because she told us that it was important for us to get to know our second country in its most wintry state.
As a good Norwegian family, we would go up every weekend we were in the country to our mountain cottage, the so-called Hytta. These are wooden huts where you experience nature at its deepest: no water, no electricity and where we learned to put on our cross-country skis to fetch firewood, to carry our food from the car to the house and, of course, to walk in the snowy mountains.

 

I remember my grandfather, in his little log room. He would talk to us many nights about his travels and especially about those trips of his to the Lofoten Islands, which were far to the north and where he went every year. The truth is that, at that time, those stories did not appeal to me at all, as they were stories of the North Sea, the Cod, the fishermen and those rugged Mountains with a brutal alpine look.

 

“Kari, you will fall in love with Lofoten the day you go there”.

I also couldn’t understand why, with those mountains and that snow, there were no ski resorts on those islands (as a child, my head couldn’t conceive of being able to climb mountains and ski without ski lifts).

What was ski touring? Back then, when you went to the snow, you either went nordic skiing or alpine skiing. Little else…. But as time went by, I was able to agree with my grandfather: “Kari, you will fall in love with Lofoten the day you go there”.

 

The power of destiny…

It seems that sometimes life takes you where it seems you were destined to go.
When I was young, when I was studying tourism in Granada at the time, I began to combine it with my career as a ski instructor. For years I lived in Sierra Nevada, as I loved giving ski lessons, and as I am a person who seeks to develop myself and I don’t know how to stand still, with the years and my dedication to ski technique I managed to join the Spanish Ski School’s team of proven skiers, as well as obtaining my title as National Alpine Ski Coach.

 

But over the years my professional life changed. About 18 years ago, I started working in the world of sports brand distribution and then went on to study marketing and work in this area. Today I work for Gore-Tex, but back then, years ago, I found a brand that was totally similar to me: Norrøna. A brand that at that time was starting to develop its collection more oriented to freeride skiing and ski mountaineering. So I started working with them, (at that time I was the sales manager in Spain), and it was with Norrøna that I arrived for the first time in the Lofoten Islands, in the village of Henningsvaer.

 

Henningsvaer, my second home

The Scandinavian Venice, that’s what they call this town. An old fishing village linked by bridges, as they are islets jutting out of the sea and surrounded by spectacular mountains. And there I spent a few days ski mountaineering with customers and brand ambassadors. We climbed its most emblematic mountain, the Geitgjalien, with a 1,000-metre vertical drop. And it was, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. For the views, for what you experience from the peaks of these mountains, for that descent to the sea, after which we were taken by boat back to the village, but not before stopping at a charismatic beach on a fjord and where we enjoyed an incredible local dinner (where we didn’t know whether we were eating red meat or whale… and in the end, it was whale).

Time went by and little by little, those dreamy memories and sensations grew. And after a few years, I decided to return.
Being Norway, it wasn’t difficult for me to integrate and get to know “the locals”, as the people from the north are charming. The first years were more about adventure and exploring the place, we went with friends and family. By chance, I met Lionel Philippe, a mountain guide whom many of you know. He is as passionate about skiing as I am, if not more so, and about finding the best possible descents with the best possible snow.
So, after a few trips we made together to get to know the area better, we went from organising private trips to organising trips with a few customers.

 

Until today, when we are proud of Outnørdtravel, our travel agency specialised in this destination.