Three weeks behind the snow ploughs

The county publishes its clearing plan for Senja in February. It is a spreadsheet with road numbers, crew names and a column headed "expected", which everyone involved treats as a joke.

Following the crews

I asked to follow two crews and was given a radio and a high-visibility jacket. The arrangement was simple: I stayed a kilometre behind the plough, and I had about an hour on each cleared stretch before it opened to traffic.

That hour is the whole series. The road is black and wet, the banks are freshly cut, and nothing has driven on it since October.

Week two

On the ninth day a slide closed the road behind us and the plan stopped meaning anything. We spent four nights in a road-maintenance cabin with a wood stove and one working socket. I shot eleven frames that week and kept two.

What I would do again

Travel with the people who know the road, carry less film than you think you need, and agree in advance who gets the socket.