I thought they were joking when they told me to put the back brace on.
That stuff about my spine popping out on the final bend was just to get me really bricking it - wasn't it? The Olympic Bob Sled run at Lillehammer in Norway takes just 55 seconds from top to bottom. Imagine the most crazy rollercoaster ride you've ever done and multiply by it by ten. By the final bend you're travelling at nearly 100 miles an hour with 5Gs of pressure trying to push your head between your knees. That's more than a fighter pilots experience in wartime dogfights.
Usually you get a warm-up run on an inflatable raft which goes a lot slower, so there's time to decide if you're hard enough to handle the full-on sled, but we were in a bit of a hurry. Sat on reindeer skin rugs in the briefing hut, clasping steaming cups of hot cloudberry juice we were told it was going to be one run each, no messing about.
Any questions? The only one I could think of was, do they always play heavy rock over the loudspeaker system or did Norwegian pop sensations A-ha ever get an airing? The Living Daylights seemed somehow quite appropriate.
At the top of the run we were given our back braces and helmets - both were carefully checked to make sure they fitted OK. Then it was time to cram into the four man bob. Jorn out driver was a real pro but I still felt pretty nervous. I was sat at the back with just a couple of handles inside the sled to hold on to with Max the guy in front sat rather tight between my legs. The music on the loudspeakers was We Will Rock You by Queen. Were they having a laugh?
The sled starts slowly. For about 10 seconds I had time to admire the views of distant snowy mountains. Then you hit the first curve and the speed comes from nowhere. Within a moment I was screaming my lungs out. It's quite a bumpy ride and I was glad I was wearing that helmet. It's also really noisy too - you thunder round the bends, the runners on the sled scream and scrape. It's also brilliant fun, a massive rush.
The last couple of bends are mental. Just for a moment I could feel this huge pressure pushing down on me. Briefly my back really hurt. And then we were cruising up the long straight of the slow down zone. They almost had to carry me out of the sled I was shaking so much.
My legs were shaking and I was wearing a crash helmet again the next day at the ski resort of Kvitfjell. It's Norway's best skiing area, but we were planning to go up a frozen waterfall rather than down a snowy slope. First we had to get to the waterfall though. This involved a long scramble through knee deep snow which in itself was hard going.
Ice climbing is kind of like rock climbing. Except you have spiky crampons attached to your boots and ice axes in your hands to smash holes in the frozen ice and haul yourself up. The waterfall was only about 20 metres high, but it was incredibly hard work. Wearing a harness and roped up securely so I couldn't fall, I hacked into the ice above me with the axes and pulled myself up, sticking my boots hard in to get good footholds. Smashing a good solid hold in the ice with the ice axes is not at all easy. Slivers of ice pinged and bounced around me, but frequently the axes failed to make much of an impression on the rock hard ice. Kicking my feet hard into the ice to get a good grip with the crampons was similarly draining. The spikes don't need to go in that far to get a good purchase, but it takes a few steps to begin to trust that they'll hold firm.
I got about halfway up and then my legs and arms quite literally stopped working. I fell off. For split second there was panic and then my rope and harness held me and I swung back and forth. Lars our instructor then lowered me back safely to the ground again. None of my group got to the top. It was just too physically demanding.
Looking for something a little less energetic, I spent the next day learning to cross country ski. It's not as easy as it looks, but it's certainly more straight forward than ice climbing. Peter our guide kitted us out with skis, boots and long poles.
Whilst your feet are locked tightly onto the skis for downhill skiing, when you ski cross country it's only the toe of the boot that's attached allowing the heel to lift so you can kick each ski forward. Moving along in a straight line is pretty easy, slopes are more challenging as cross country skis don't have much of an edge. It's surprisingly easy to lose control even if you've skied before as I had. I watched in amusement as Alan and Max collided like a pair of ungainly ballet dancers and ended up in a heap of legs, skis and poles only to find myself on my arse in the snow five minutes later.
Once we'd got the hang of the basic technique Peter took us out around the perimeter of a huge frozen lake. The silence was perfect, only broken by the rhythmic shushing of our skis. The trick is to get into a good rhythm and try and glide as far as possible on each ski. We were all puffing a little after the first mile or so, but the views were other worldly.
The late afternoon sun cast long shadows across the frozen ice. We darted off to one side and headed through a small fir forest, the trees all heavy with clumps of snow. I'd scared myself silly on that bobsled, and completely knackered myself out on the ice waterfall, but it was here that I think I found the real Norwegian winter. A snowy wilderness unchanged for generations.