Trysil trip report, March 2022

We (50-something couple) flew with BA from LHR to Oslo Gardemoen, and drove to Trysil with Hertz hire car (Suzuki Ignis – rough as a badger's bott, but did the job). About a 2 hour drive, with tolls of about £15 each way. No real issues at LHR T5 on departure or arrival, though we had to wait a while for the bags on arrival.

Accommodation
Second-floor 2-bed apartment at the Lodge, about 200m from the main piste front. Easily booked through the Skistar website.
The apartment was built in 2020 and was very modern. Dishwasher, decent oven and hob, big fridge freezer. One bedroom with a big double bed, and one with bunk beds. There was access to a ski locker and a drying cabinet in flat for drying boots and clothing. There was a designated indoor parking space (took a while to find).
We had a couple of problems with flat (short of bedding and the oven switched itself off), but both were resolved within 30 minutes by Skistar staff.
The apartment block was occupied mainly by Danes and Swedes.
The Lodge is ski out and nearly ski in, with a gentle road running down to the kids area where you can get a button lift to a slow chair that takes you to a green run that runs down to the two main chair lifts. You can ski to about 100m from the door.

Resort
Skiing is around one mountain, and is on the friendly side – lots of greens, blues and reds, but there is a lot of variety, though, with something for everyone.
Turistsenteret - main centre – nice long reds and blues based around 2 chairlifts, with some nice shorter but steeper blues away from the 2 chairlifts
Hogegga – five or six black runs and blue and green "roads" served by a chair and a drag.
Skihytta – a south-facing area, with a chair serving a few reds and a black. There's a nice rolling long green run served by a 1km long T-bar
Hoyfjellssenteret – north-facing area, with lots of greens served by drag lifts. Ideal learning area for kids. Three or four reds, a blue and a green served by a chair. Hideously long T-bar serving a deserted red run.

Runs around main tourist centre
These are all through the trees.
Blues 13, 61, 62 – nothing too steep, even for a blue
Reds 77, 79 – not steep at all, but more of a pitch than the blues. Would likely be blues in other resorts
Red 15 – steeper in a couple of places than 77, 79 and probably correctly graded red.
Blues above Knettsetra – 49, 26, 25 – steeper than the other blues, but shorter, too
Greens 19 – nice easy green "road", with some poling needed. Watch the crossing points.
Green 34 – less poling than 19, but can get icy when in the shade
Green 65 – the "mean green" which is a bit steep for a green, but it's miles wide

Green 36 and blue 35 to Hogegga – pleasant to start with, then turn into 'orrible narrow roads. The sort of runs you do once. Lovely views from blue 35 though.

Skihytta
These runs are south-facing so get the sun. Red 4 is the easiest red, red 12 being steeper and narrower, with red 5 being steeper still, but very wide. Red 4 is the home-run from the other side of the mountain, so can get busy and chopped-up
Green 16 is a lovely 1km or so run, rolling and no one else on it. That's because there's a 1km+ T-bar back up.

Hoyfjellssenteret
These runs are generally south facing. Red 53 a lovely, reasonably-wide red, but can get busy. Reds 54 and 58 looked similar to 53, but were closed due to bare patches. Red 52 is narrower. There are lots of greens to muck about on. Blue 50 is short, but relatively steep, and seems to have lots of death pebbles

Weather
Five days of unbroken sunshine, and one day of flat-light murk.

Piste prep
Piste prep was generally pretty good. The weather was very warm on a few days (10C+), so the south facing slopes of the Turistsenteret, Skihytta, and some of Hogegga got slushy.
There were fewer issues on north facing slopes. Some areas were suffering from lack of snow, with reds 52, 54 and 58 being closed. I was floored by an on-piste tree root on one run.

Places to eat/drink on mountain
Skihytta café had decent cakes and hot choc, as did Knetsettera waffle house.

Off-piste
We tried Kort & Godt café and bakery, which was OK. The one evening meal out we had was at La Pasteria. An excellent meal. A huge shared starter, two really tasty and huge pasta dishes, shared pudding, two large beers and a tip set us back £78.

There are plenty of warm rooms dotted around, but can be hard to find. They are usually around the back of buildings.

Vibe
The resort was very quiet Sunday to Thursday. Very quiet pistes and no noticeable afterski scene. That changed on the Friday and Saturday, with more skiers and proper afterski. Laaven has more traditional afterski for the youngsters. Skipuben and Taste Mat & Vinhus for the older crowd. Friday and Saturday sees lots of visitors from Oslo.

Costs
Skiing in Norway is not as expensive as people think (unless you want to do lots of drinking).

Flights - £300 (inc. hold bags)
Car hire, tolls and fuel - £350
Apartment - £1000
Ski passes - £450 for 2
Ski hire - £120 for 2 (Trysil Skishop – far cheaper than Skistar and skis were superior – would recommend)
Typical costs in resort – coffee - £2.50-3; hot chocolate - £2.50-4.00; waffle - £4; large local beer - £8-10; large "special" beer - £10-12; big lump of cake or doughnut - £3-5; large can of beer in supermarket - £2.50-3; pasta restaurant main course - £15-20; starter - £7-10; pudding - £7-10; McDonalds medium meal - £8-9;
No cash needed – paid by card all the time

It was a great trip, and would definitely go again.

Things I didn't like - too many drag lifts (but probably cannot justify chairs in some places – just not enough traffic to warrant a chairlift). The path to boot room was not kept clear (very icy – guess which idiot fell on it?). Instructions in the flat would be good (e.g. re parking, waste, recycling), as would better joining instructions re access to parking.

Things to do differently
I'd probably fly on Saturday, stay overnight in a local hotel, arrive at resort early Sunday and ski all day Sunday – it's very quiet in resort on Sunday.

Looked at this resort this season.
Useful review but I'm not making it out this season.