It was by serendipity that I discovered Lofoten. At the time, it was my habit to plan an annual ski trip for friends, and as a token of gratitude for this gesture, my friends surprised me with a wonderful ski jacket for my birthday. 

Finding that the jacket did not fit well in the arms, I exchanged it for another that fit quite wonderfully, from a brand that I had long been intrigued by, Norrona, from their Lofoten line of big mountain freeride skiwear. 

Curious about Lofoten and its whereabouts, I looked it up and discovered it to be an archipelago of islands in Norway, north of the Arctic Circle with dramatic sharp mountains plunging all along the coast deep into the cold, blue waters of the Norwegian Sea. Little did I know the pictures could hardly do it justice for what it looked like in person.

Lofoten is hauntingly beautiful— the type of place where your deepest dreams can become your ultimate realities. And the mountains offer a seemingly innumerable number of lines to ski— one can be endlessly mesmerized just looking and staring at all the possibilities. It is here where I found myself, some years later, on a treacherous traverse, clutching the side of a steep mountain slope under the steady guidance of our professional mountain guide Erica.

My dream was simple: to ski a couloir— a steep, narrow gully flanked by rock walls— with a direct ocean view, as though skiing straight into the sea. Erica, ever game to accommodate the request, led us deep into the mountains after parking our car on the roadside, a Lofoten custom for backcountry adventurers.

Trekking through snowcapped boulder fields and icy-walled foothills, the roadside soon vanished from sight. And after hours of hiking through a series of towering traverses and intimidating ridgelines, we found our ideal line: steep, narrow, framed by sheer rock, and dazzling under a bluebird sky, with the ocean beckoning below. It was the proverbial stuff of dreams, becoming that ultimate reality— though not a perfect one, as one hard turn at the top uncovered a near full wall of ice, buried beneath the powder. Drawing on my East Coast roots (where icy slopes are the norm), I navigated the hazard and plunged headlong into the couloir.

If you find yourself in this situation, and I do hope you do, you’ll discover that moments like this are why you ski. The snow flies up in soft, roaring pillows as you carve powder turns, adrenaline surging through each swooping arc. Every heart-pounding turn flings you closer to the immense, jagged rock walls before the next pulls you away, with the scenic sea below. “Fun” doesn’t begin to describe it.

And if you’re staying at the Lofoten ski lodge, which I would highly recommend, you can unwind by regaling your fellow travelers and skiers in the barrel-shaped sauna perched on the fisherman’s pier overlooking the harbor and jolt your senses back to life again by jumping headlong into the frigid, yet magnificent, waters off the Arctic sea. After dinner, accompanied by copious pours of beer and wine, and feasting on the daily catch of local cod, you sink deep beneath soft down covers in your cozy fisherman’s cabin, painted bright red with a white roof, only to do it all over again the next day. 

The snow isn’t always perfect, and sometimes you get caught in a wind squall so strong you feel like you’ll be blown clear off the side of the mountain, but then the sun will peek out, the wind might lift, and you’ll clear a patch of tacky snow to find yourself knee deep in soft powder gliding through a winter wonderland of jagged peaks soaring towards the heavens with the sun cascading down the backside. These are the moments you live for. 

And in that sense, skiing, like life, is about finding those moments. The beauty lies in the small openings, the fleeting breaks in the clouds. When the sun shines through, you grab it and savor it for all it’s worth. And while you don’t need to go to Lofoten to find your dream line, if adventure calls, one could do far worse than getting wonderfully, gloriously lost in Lofoten.