It was more than a year in coming, but Arapahoe Basin tele instructor Leslie Resnick is now reveling in the memories of a trip to Norway to ski the fjords.

When a volcano erupted in Iceland just before their planned trip last year, the departure was delayed until this April, when Crested Butte's and K2's Heather Paul Featherman gathered 10 women, including Resnick and Breckenridge's Cassidy Brush, to sail from Alesund through the Norwegian Sea to the Trondheim area. Their 10-day trip finished at the end of last month, leaving Resnick marveling more at the experience than the quality of the snow.

“Words can't describe the camaraderie,” she said, describing how the dance parties on board the sailboats, morning preparations, the treks in to the snow line, skiing everything from wide open fields to steep couloirs, eating “like guys” at the end of the day and more were all equal parts of the trip.

Coming from an avid skier, it's saying a lot for the skiing to not be preeminent.

It also takes a lot for Resnick to say, “I took my ego and shoved it,” as she was surrounded not only by high-caliber female skiers but by women who got along.

First-time experience

She's never been on a women's specific trip of any kind, Resnick said — even going to camp as a child. When she was chosen in the 1990s to be an ambassador to Japan for the Colorado ski industry, it was 10 men and 10 women.

It was the first time Resnick has skied terrain outside of the United States, Canada and Japan. And as far as the conditions went, it was warm (they saw avalanches cascading from peaks into the sea) and the snow was corn — maritime snow is very different from Colorado's inland snow.

Instead, it was all about the experience of gearing up in the morning, hiking an hour in shoes through tiny Norwegian towns to the snow line, and then skinning to whatever peak they sought to bag — and then, skiing from 4,500 feet to the sea, provided there wasn't a waterfall in the way.

“If you can imagine dropping off a mountain with mossy rock walls on both sides, dropping into a couloir, the ocean below you,” Resnick said. “If you look off to the right, you could see our boats. It was brilliant.”

Often, the women would hike into town, pull out the map and pick a spot for their day's adventure. They'd often ascend one side of the fjord one day, and do the opposing side the next day — looking back at what they skied from across the water.

For Resnick, who used to be a backcountry guide and is a fan of helicopters and snow cats, the hike in was rough.

“I've never done human-powered backcountry skiing because it's kind of against my religion,” she joked, adding that having the sun up from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. made the slog easier.

Resnick was most surprised to see all of central Norway shut down for the Easter holiday. She said it seemed like everyone closed their doors and headed to the fjords to ski, boat, see family and party.

“One day, I felt like I was at Disneyland, there were so many people,” she said, adding that her group crossed paths with folks from around the world, including some on splitboards.

“It was the experience of a lifetime,” Resnick said. “The trip exceeded our dreams in the experience of the who and how and where we were. The skiing turned out to be not the most important thing.”