(Not) getting cold feet.

A lot of reindeer and a bit of skiing

This morning I woke up to a beautiful sunrise and no cloud in the sky. I got ready quickly, to not miss any of the daylight and got my equipment from the car. Such a nice feeling to stand on the skis again! 

As soon as I got away from the cross country track though the snow showed it's true face and it was a crust of ice with some melted slush underneath. Needlees to say it was very very hard to go uphill in these conditions. I have no skins on my skis (because I don't own any) and it felt a lot like going on an escalator that goes the wrong way. After about 45 minutes I looked back and I realized that I wasn't going anywhere. So I decided to drop my plans of getting to the top of Jakobshöjden for today. The way down took me about three minutes.

As I was already rushing downhill, I continued to the nearby lake and then up again to the mountain station. 

I drove to Idre, which is 40km away, to look for some skins, fuel the car and do some shopping. On the way I encountered at least a hundred reindeer that were licking the salt of the street. They are completely crazy about the salt that is used by the snowplow in order to make the road less slippery! Some moved away as the car approached, others couldn't resist and continued to lick the asphalt, even as I was half a meter away. I got out of the car several times just to look at them. One even came to me and sniffed on my hand. Unfortunately for the reindeer my hands were not salty.

would you guys mind to move a little? 

Nipfjällsjugan

"Got some salt?"

Sámi flag, as Idre is Sweden's southern most part of Sápmi

Storsätern Kapell

3 pm sunset over the STF Fjällstation

Plans for a big hike in 2016

On a rainy, dark evening, between to long work days, there's nothing better than dreaming about what to do next year!

My goal is to go on one longer tour, outside of the dimensions of what I usually do. Most hikes I've done resume around a week or 100km, but I want to know how it feels to be on tour for a longer time and achieve something bigger. I don't dare yet to put this tour into winter time and go on a long backcountry ski tour. It would feel like I'm not experienced enough when it comes to camping in the snow or dealing with a storm which forces me to dig a snowhole, to wait it out. I will definitely do a winter tour, but it will be something shorter and probably involve sleeping in huts. 

For the summer I have had several ideas: Nordkalottleden, that goes 800km through Norway, Finland and Sweden, Gröna Bandet, from Grövelsjön in Dalarna to Treriksröset, the most northern point of Sweden, or even Norge på Langs. 

Thoughts of the advantages or disadvantages of these tours so far: Nordkalottleden seems to be quite doable and I feel like I know the area already quite well. Part of it is the northern terminus of Kungsleden, the stretch from Abisko to Singi, about 100km. Another part of about 70km is shared with Padjelantaleden, which I hiked last summer. Overall the trail doesn't cut straight through the landscape but wiggles around. The aim is not to come a long way from one point to another but to experience a lot of different places, switching from one country to another. 

Here's a map of Nordkalottleden

I think I would really enjoy this trail, at the same time it just doesn't pose the adventure and challenge that Gröna Bandet or Norge på Langs, does. On these two trails you always know what you are going for: to cross the whole country, or at least the whole mountain range. I like this kind of feeling. It's this possibiliy to complete something, to have finished something from the beginning to the end. I find this very satisfying. 

Gröna Bandet (the green ribbon)

I just drew this line on the map to show more or less how it does look. It's not a single trail designated as Gröna Bandet but there's an abundancy of different trails, that one can make use of. So I could choose to take the easiest, quickest way through, or even do the whole Nordkalottleden on the northern end. Without taking any bigger detours the trip whould resume itself at about 1300 to 1400km. 

There is an organized way to tackle this challenge, it's basically a website where you sign up and have to go with a GPS so you can be tracked all along the way. You can find it on www.vitagronabandet.se

I'm not so sure yet if I would do that. On one hand there's no real need to sign up for something like that, you can just do in on your own. On the other hand knowing that your blog is featured on their page and that they even follow you with facebook posts etc. can give that extra little pressure that one needs to make it through a tough day. Giving up gets a little bit harder. 

When it comes to Norge på Langs this is the trail I know the least about. It's really long. 

Last summer I met a Swiss guy who was doing this hike and it kind of inspired me. According to www.norgepaalangs.info only 320 people have completed this trail, and that since 1951! Yes, that's a real motivation. 

I'm not sure how long it would take and I think it would be about twice as long as the hike through the Swedish mountains, so about 2600km. It should be doable in about 4 to 5 months I guess. This one I would definitely only tackle with a hiking partner. If you're interested, just write me! ;)

Here's apicture from the webpage I linked above, that shows how it could look:

Norge på Langs

Resuming 2015, part 3: Padjelanta, Lofoten and southern Sweden

July started off with what was thought to be a hike through Sarek. Because of unusual high snow, that was staying till summer in the higher altitudes, we had to change our plans. 

We hiked along the Padjelantaleden instead, a trail that surrounds Sarek Nationalpark on the western side. It has bridges over all the bigger and smaller rivers, while in Sarek you need to cross any stream just as it is. Not so hard to imagine that this is a risky and very uncertain thing to do, especially when you see the landscape for the first time and it's drowning in melting snow.
Due to flooding in the lower areas we even decided to skip the first 3 stages of this trail by helicopter. Some bridges had broken under the floods and parts of the path itself were flooded. We didn't know about this as we arrived on the trailhead but were told by the staff of the mountain lodge. So the helicopter trip was a spontaneous decision.
At the end of the 160km trail from Kvikkjobb to Ritsem we had some spare time left and since my friend Moa had a bad knee we decided to have some daytours in Lofoten instead of hiking further on Nordkalottleden or a similar trail. 

The helicopter tour was not planned, but sitting in a chopper is always awesome. 

crossing a smaller river with about 2 degrees water temperature.

I had never been to Lofoten before and it turned out to be one of my favorite places of all time. I will definitely go back there as soon as I can. There's surf, incredible fishing, steep, snowy peaks right next to beaches with turqoise water,...

The only downside is the norwegian prices, but since we slept in our tents and brought food in our swedish rental, we didn't have to spend that much money over there. 

Turquois water, dolfins in the water and sheep on the beach. 

Kvalvika strand

Picture taken around midnight

Reine village, probably one of the most photographed in Norway.

Munkebu hut, the little red dot in the middle of the picture. It's an interesting hike there and a scenic place to spend the night. You need to be member in DNT or rent a key for the hut at the tourist information. 

This was taken at 1 am. 

After the summer I did some smaller weekend adventures, mostly in southern Sweden and close to where we live. Some fishing, visiting Tiveden Nationalpark and some smaller hikes. 

I really like this picture. I wonder how the tree roots grew that way. 

Tiveden Nationalpark, where the trolls live. 

Sunset over Nävsjön, close to Norrköping. I took this with my iPhone 4 without any filters or stuff. 

Foggy semptember morning at Nävsjön. 

I spent my first night in my new Hilleberg tent, which was my birthday present. It's a awesome little 4-season tent and I hope I'll spend a lot of nights in it next year. 

Resuming 2015, part 2: bushcraft, moving and back to the snow.

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.

Me hiking along the abyss in Picos de Europa, Asturias, Spain.

Above the clouds! The view was so awesome, pictures do no justice. 

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. 

there was always an interesting mixture between snow, mud and rivers running under the snow.