Jotunheimen - home of the giants

Jotunheimen

This norwegian National Park is home to the 29 highest mountains of the country and has thus received it's name 'the home of the giants'. I was really excited to come here for the first time and see the landscape. Even though we have only been in one part of the region, I can say for sure that it's really the home of the most impressive mountains in Scandinavia. For the past days we have stayed in Gjendesheim, a hut by the Norwegian Trekking Association DNT. There is plenty to do around here, mostly on skis of course. 

It was overall a pretty nice experience, I must admit though that I feel more at home in some other parts of Scandinavia. The mountains in Jotunheimen are big and impressive, the distances between the huts are long and there are no apparent 'cozy' spots, just rugged rocks and steep cliffs. As amazing it is to look at this kind of landscape, it's not the type of terrain that I really feel comfortable in. It might be for a reason that the swedish are considered 'valley crawlers' (dalkrypare) compared to the norwegians, that move higher up in the mountains. For a trip where I spend a longer time outdoors camping and hiking or skiing, I really do prefer places with a good mix of interesting peaks and cozy forests where you can find some shelter against the wind. Probably good I'm living in Sweden and have all those lame little mountain areas in reach ;)

Here are some impressions! 

Early morning over lake Gjende

Trying to get through the 40cm thick ice to catch some fishies. 

Me, freezing inside my windsack. 

There are two persons inside this picture...

Digging a hole for a shelter

Lunch inside our self built shelter, away from the biting wind

The first sunbeams hit Besseggen

Same perspective at night

View from the way up to Bessvatnet

Another lunch, another wind protection

Here are two of the day tours we did.

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Tresticklan Nationalpark by ski (plus a moose sighting)

There's places where every swede seems to go to, for cross-country skiing or to spend their weekend in a cabin: Åre, Idre, Jämtlandsfjällen. There's other places, far closer to the big cities like Gothenburg, where very few people go. One of those places is definitely Tresticklan Nationalpark. It's pristine, wild, rather easy to reach, but just not very known.

I can just recommend any outdoorsy person to go there and maybe even spend a night in Budalsvika hut, on the Norwegian side of the border.

Here are some pics of this weekend, on which we saw a moose, glided through a sublime, frozen winter landscape, sat by a warm fire, ate a lot of good food and met some interesting people. Also it was surprisingly cold, with under -20C during the night and early morning. 

Just after the picture the moose walked on bug, fluffy feet back in the forest. This mas my closest moose encounter yet.

The colours were stunning

One ski-pole is not a new trend- the other one simply broke some kilometers into the hike.

Budalsvika in the snow. No footsteps to see.

Beautiful ice flowers

Good to get some fire going, when it's -7ºC indoors

Melting water for dinner

Everybody lined up around the stove

Temperature was dropping steadily

Icy window decoration in the morning

The woodshed

Breathing hurts a little bit, until your lungs get used to the air temperature

Dreaming about next year's big hike

The incredible feeling of finishing a trail, of coming to the top. 

Now in December the days are short and dark. The best thing, especially at work, is to dream about my plans for next year. At this point I don't want to call it "planning" yet, cause I still haven't decided for a specific hike. 

A big inspiration for me is the norwegian adventurer Lars Monsen, who has spent years of his life in the Scandinavian wilderness. I recently got two of his books and especially the story about his year long hike through Norway is an absolute inspiration. In 1988 he and his friend Trond decided to walk along the Norwegian border, all the way from Russia to the south of the country. Even considering that the conditions have changed a lot since then, the book gives me the awesome feeling that I can make happen anything that I dream about. 

Mixing up languages- one in German one in Norwegian

 I can't even say what attracts me so much about a long hike. I guess it's the feeling of adventure, of doing something unusual, outside of the time frame of a normal holiday. Also it's the concept of "holiday" that I don't like. Holiday is a week or so to take a rest and get a break from work in order to relax. What I want to do is (at least in my mind) not a holiday. It's not an expedition either, since others have done it before, it's an adventure, a task that I give myself, an experience I want to have in my life. 

Of course I can't even be sure I will stick to my plan. What if I get tired of walking? If I start to feel bored, worn out, if my body hurts, if I feel lonely or lost? 

I know all these things can and most of them will happen, to some extend at least. What I will try is to overcome the negative feelings, wait it out, see if it gets better and maybe afterwards realize how overcoming these problems made me stronger. 

Even giving up before finishing the hike is of course a possibility but I will try to avoid that, of course. One thing that can help to overcome situations in which I will want to give up is for instance this blog, or signing up for an "official" hike, such as Gröna Bandet or Norge på Langs. Knowing that there is something specific to archieve, that I can count the kilometers backwards to point X and that some people are virtually following my trip is definitely a huge motivation. 

Other than that, signing up for anything seems a bit pointless of course, since I would need to follow specific rules, which takes away a part of the freedom of the hike. But because of the motivational aspect I will probably still do it. 

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 4: autumn in Sweden.

This is the last part of what is like a summary of my outdoors 2015. Since the year is not over yet, this part will stop by the end of November, and there's still another adventure to be had! 

Back in october I went to a Bushcaft course that was specialized on axe skills, given by Nordic Bushcraft, close to Jönköping. I learned a lot of useful basics when it comes to handling a tool like an axe. Those things can be damn dangerous if you don't know how to use them and one single mistake can be the end of your foot or hand. We even did a lot of different fires, which is something I'm really into. There are so many different ways of starting a campfire, depending on the materials and situation. On the pictures below you see a fire which i call a flame-baguette. It's a traditional Sámi fire, that was/is used to stay warm during the night, while you are sleeping. It burns slowly and does not spread too much heat. 

For all of you who speak Swedish I can even recommend the book Eld from the author Yngve Ryd, in which he interviews a row of Sámi people who talk about their knowledge about different fires among other interesting topics regarding the Sámi culture. 

Other things we did on this weekend were: eating a lot of bacon and egg and building some tools. This bowsaw, that you can see on the second picture, took me several attempts. Bending the branch, that I chopped of a fir over the fire was not that hard, but getting the metal part screwed into the branch without breaking the wood was not quite that easy. 

On another weekend in october I went to Tresticklan Nationalpark, which is located just by the Norwegian border, only two hours of a drive north of Gothenburg. It seems to me like it's one of the 29 Swedish nationalparks that tend to be forgotten, or the least to say: less popular. 

It's my goal to visit all of the nationalparks, so I figured out this one was the next on my list, since it's not too far away and it seems to be a fitting place for an autumn hike. We walked from the parking into the forest and it was a really magical, green, mossy forest. I always especially like it when I know there could be a lot of wild animals around, even when I usually don't get to see them. In Tresticklan there are wolves, lynx and sometimes even bears, just to list some of the predators. 

We walked about 5km through the forest to come to the Norwegian border, which runs through a little stream. There's a cute little sign on the middle of the bridge, which you see on a picture below. Despite the short walk we had decided to spend the night in Budalsvika hut, which also belongs to DNT. It felt like a real adventure spending a night in a forest hut, without electricity, phone reception or running water. It was a bit scary but also quite cozy. 

Budalsvika, a hut from the Norwegian Hiking Association (DNT)

If you want to enter the building you need to order a key that fits these locks, same in huts all over Norway. 

The cute, little border between Norway and Sweden.

In the end of October I was lucky enough to get a week off from work and me and my friend Lea went on a trip to Dalarna and Norway. We drove about 700km to Grövelsjön, a little village with Sweden's most southern mountain station and the offical beginning of the Scandinavian Mountains inside Sweden. We spend the first nights in the STF mountain station and did some day hikes around. The weather was brilliant, not a single moment of rain. Unfortunately there was no snow yet either.

Me looking at Städjan

After two days of warming up we hiked over the mountains to Hävlingen, a hut 15km away from the next sroad and as well without any electricity. It was expecially exciting since it was Halloween and we were probably the only people to be around and the first ones to come there in some weeks. It actually felt a bit creepy. It didn't get better when we realized that there was no petroleum lantern or candles and we were having 16 hours of darkenss ahead of us. Oh, and also you couldn't lock the door. In the end it turned out to be a nice evening: we had our headlights and some small candles I found in my pack, and we lit a cozy fire in the oven. It was a really nice expeience and it centrainly wouldn't have been the same if I went on my own. 

I want to come back here when there's snow and ice everywhere... And also in summer to paddle around on the lake and cath some fat fishies....

Evening light at 2.30pm.

The day after we went over to Norway, more exactly to Femundsmarka Nasjonalpark and spent the night in a little hut in Elgå. Our plan was to hike into the nationalpark and sleep over in the forest. In the end we changed our minds and decided to climb the peak on the highest mountain around, Elgåhogna with 1640m over sealevel. It was an awesome tour, quite a lot of gravel and a steep slope closer to the top. Once we were on the peak we could see all over the area, at least some 50km into every direction. It was really awesome- until my camera broke. So half of the pictures I upload here are actually taken with my old iPhone 4. 

Taking a closer look the map

Start of the trail to the top

The views get better

it's always a good feeling to have achieved something. Even more with weather like this in the first week of November, 

Later in November Lea visited us and we spent a day fishing and sitting by the campfire. You don't always have to drive far away to have a little adventure or spend a day that makes you feel glad. As you can see on the picture below we were embarassing enough to all wear the same hat. But to be honest this Norrøna wool hat is like the warmest and coziest thing that ever touched my head. Also I was the one who had it first!