After all the trips in winter, that resumed mostly around snow and cold, now spring was coming in Portugal. I went for a bushcraft course south of Lisbon, where I learned some cool things about making fire and simple outdoors living. I'm not really so much into the whole bushcraft thing that I want to build a shelter in the forest and always just go with my axe and knife, but to me it's some very useful skills that one can learn there. Being good when it comes to lighting a fire, building a shelter and using tools is always an advantage.
In may I did a wilderness rescue course given by a S.A.R. instructor. We trained to perform rescues in different outdoors scenarios, mostly with very little means of actual equipment. The goal was to bring one or several victims into safety, stabilize their condition, or simply to safe their life.
I learned that carrying an unconscious person is incredibly hard. It's like a bag with 70kg of stones. Even with four or five people to help you it's a real challenge to walk a kilometer in mountaineous terrain.
It's comforting that I have an idea now how to behave if I ever come upon an injured person or somebody I hike with gets hurt. Even just how to treat an injured person to comfort them and don't let them fall into shock, was an important thing to learn.
I can really recommend to visit one of these courses.
In may we were starting to move from Porto to Lund, so I got to drive twice all the way through Europe. About 3000km per way. The driving was everything between relaxing, enjoyable, stressy and a pain in the ass. Driving through Paris is still my worst nightmare, and I've done this already like a dozen times in my life. There's cars coming from everywhere, motorbikes squeezing their way through the lanes and far too many signs.
I didn't get controlled by police or customs even once, crossing the borders of Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Danmark, Sweden and everything in return.
The nice part was Spain, where the food is like the biggest reward for a day long drive. On the first picture you see a Asturian Fabada, a bean stew with different meat and saussages. This was supposed to be the starter. Just look at the ridiculous size of the soup spoon next to it! Needless to say I had to give up halfway through.
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| Me hiking along the abyss in Picos de Europa, Asturias, Spain. |
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| Above the clouds! The view was so awesome, pictures do no justice. |
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| I love Picos de Europa! It's such an exciting landscape. |
After having settled down in Lund I started to plan a trip to Sarek Nationalpark in Lapland, together with Moa, who you see on the picture. We went for a training and warm-up hike to Söderåsen Nationalpark in Skåne, which is slightly closer to civilization than Sarek.
In the end of June, right after celebrating Midsummer, Gustav and me unexpectedly got the opportunity to go on a trip together. We decided to tackle northern Kungsleden again, even though it was still quite wintery up there. Now, after having done this trail three times, I feel like I'm pretty through with it, but it's definitely some of the most alpine and breathtaking nature that Sweden has to offer.
We had snow on five of seven days on the trail and walked the longest time with snowshoes. Most hikers turned back after the first day, in Abiskojaure, when they became aware of the masses of snow ahead of them. It was not an easy hike, but it was exciting and I could hardly recognize the trail (sice it was all burried). I broke through the snow twice and had to be dragged out of a deeper stream once. also stepped over some recent avalanches that turned the whole mountain upside down. It was more than what you ask for, when you think about Kungsleden.
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| there was always an interesting mixture between snow, mud and rivers running under the snow. |
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