Just 300 km from home – bright sky and temperatures round -25 °C – finally a winter as it should be in Northern Sweden.
I shot theses photos in Solberget tonight. Here I will stay some days and visit the winter market in Jokkmokk.
I walk along a forest path. The snow has become too deep for the car. In the right hand I carry a large waterproof bag, in the left hand my bright red neoprene drysuit. On the back I have an ICROSS.
A what?
Let’s quote the ICROSS website: What is ICROSS? – ICROSS® is a new type of watercraft. It resembles a float tube, but has many characteristics of a kayak.
My friend Hans Brettschneider bought two ICROSS for his camping ground In Bureå and invited my to test them today. We want to paddle over the Baltic Sea to the near island Björkön. According to Hans the Baltic Sea is still open.
When I arrive in Bureå Hans already had started inflating the ICROSS with a motor-driven air pump. We put the rafts into his car and drive to a place near the beach where we manually inflate them until they are filled to the brim.
(You see the rectangular patch free of snow on the ICROSS? That’s where Hans’ iPad was before I took it away for the photo. Hans uses it as a camera and takes it into the snow, the hot sauna, just everywhere)
On the back of the ICROSS there are D-rings where you can attach belts to carry the ICROSS as a backpack. That’s what I do in the first photo. We start carrying the ICROSS until one of the plastic hooks of the belt breaks. We then realise that it is much easier to drag the raft behind like a sledge. It’s winter!
After 800 metres walk through the forest I arrive at the coast. I must laugh. The Baltic Sea is far beyond from being open. It is covered with ice and snow to the horizon! Is it just slush or solid ice? I put on my drysuit and life jacket and enter the sea ice. I splash through sludge but underneath there is ice thick enough to carry my weight.
Time to change plans.
Instead of paddling (or walking) to Björkön we take fika here at the coast. There’s even a table with benches. Hans has coffee and sandwiches while I have tea and a pretzel. It snows.
Hans however has a plan B in mind. Right beside his fantastic camping ground, just behind the sauna there’s the river Bureälven. And this stream is still open. After fika we walk to the car and take it to his camping ground. There we trudge through the snow to the sauna by the river.
Again we put on waterproof clothes and put the ICROSSes into water. We have to rearrange the belts that hold the seat to improve the balance, then it’s fun to paddle to and fro. While my touring kayak is long and keeps direction, the ICROSS is easy to turn and very agile. Anyway I wouldn’t use it for longer paddle trips. Too exhausting.
(Do you see what Hans has in his hands on the last photo? I told you that he takes his iPad everywhere.)
After a while of testing and taking pictures we go ashore. Did I mention the sauna? Hans had fired it before our winter paddling experiment. It is not hot, only 30 °C, but it’s nice to sit there and relax a bit. I go into the river again, this time for winter bathing. Then a bit of sauna again until we call it a day.
Tack for turen, Hans – thank you for the tour. And thanks for your photos, which I cropped and edited for this blog article.
This week finally it snows. There is 30 cm of snow in my backyard and if the forecasts are right, it’ll be 45–50 cm at the end of the week. At last it looks wintry, even though the open Baltic Sea is still free of ice.
After taking the photo above I took the car to Tjuvkiskan, another place by the sea. The gravel road was covered with snowdrifts that became higher when I approached the sea. I could easily drive through the first ones but finally I was stuck in a half-metre-high and several metre long snowdrift. My Subaru was grounded and even with the “X-Mode” program I could neither continue nor put back the car. Fortunately it took only some minutes to shovel away the snow round the tires and then I was able to back the car out of the snow drift. The last metres to Tjuvkistan I walked …
When I looked at the photo above I realised how big the tyres are. It’s really half a metre of snow around my car.
Enough about cars – I wanted to enjoy winter and be outdoors.
There’s a very nice cross-country ski run in Skelleftehamn. It hadn’t been prepared this year due to the warm and rainy weather. Now snow had come and the snow on the track will be compacted but not yet prepared for cross-country as long it continues snowing.
Yesterday I took my fjällski – my “mountain skis” and made a tour through 10-15 cm deep snow. I was really slow and it was quite exhausting.
Today I took my fjällski again and now the snow was packed. I was faster and although the tour was longer it was less exhausting. And the descents were more fun. The last kilometre the wind increased and it started snowing again.
Temperature -6 °C. Wind. Snow. Fur hood. Woollen mittens. Ski boots. Almost like winter.
Finally some snow fell today, perhaps 5 cm. Everything starts to look nice and wintry again.
The only drawback: on the minor roads there is still bare ice under the snow. With all the snow glueing round the tyres the spikes do not work efficiently and so it is extremely slippery. It took a bit for the Subaru to work it’s way up the flat slope by the lake. At least now I know where it has its Vehicle Dynamics Control warning light.
The weather of the last weeks is easy to summarise: Much too warm! It hadn’t snowed for weeks and rain transformed the old snow into a solid layer of bare ice.
So it looked like 8 days ago when my German friend Delle and I walked over the ice to the island Storgrundet.
Some days ago it snowed, but only some millimetres. But the day before yesterday it has started snowing and yesterday it snows all day. 15 cm of fresh snow cover the ground and everything looks wintry again. Finally!
Yesterday it was Annika and me who walked over the ice to the island Storgrundet. Same place, but how different it looked!
Today it promises to be a nice sunny day with temperatures round -5 °C. But tomorrow it will be warm again, according to SMHI’s forecast up to 7 °C!
If the mountain won’t come to Muhammad, Muhammad must go to the mountain.
While the coastal weather has still much too warm (last night it rained again onto the icy roads) you can still seek winter in the Swedish mountains. Annika and I used the long weekend to visit Saxnäs (and my piano tuner who owns a house there). Some days ago it had rained even there but fortunately it snowed afterwards and everything was white when we arrived there Friday evening.
The night and the first day in Saadteskenjuana/Saxnäs was very windy with squalls round 20 m/s. That’s why we chose the car to look around, not the skies. The bay Faepmienloekte/Fatmomakkeviken, part of the large lake Gåaltoe/Kultsjön was partly open. Maybe because of the current of the stream Jeanoe/Ransarån, maybe because of the stormy wind and the warm weather. In the back the wind blew the new snow over the ice and highly into the air. It was not cold, but windproof clothes were necessary to feel comfortable.
A comment on the naming of the locations: The first part is the Sámi name, the second the Swedish name. The headlines and repetitions have only the Swedish names to keep it short.
Faepmie/Fatmomakke is an old Sámi meeting point. In 1781 the Swedes erected a first chapel. Both Sámi and Swedish people lived here. Since 2014 it is a “kulturreservat” – an area to protect the culture of that place. I loved the old wooden houses by the lake Gåaltoe/Kultsjön.
When we drove back we still could see snow blowing over the lake. Above the whirling snow dust the risen sun had started to illuminate the mountains of the Marsfjäll.
Step by step we drove back to Saxnäs and I used every parking place to take pictures.
A rare phenomenon had been observed the last days: polar stratospheric clouds. I already could see some the days before on my way from Skelleftehamn to Umeå. Now in Saxnäs they were spread over half the afternoon sky. If they are near the sun the light is diffracted and the clouds are very colourful. I have seen such clouds before but never as intense and colourful as that day.
In 2005 I bought my first fjällskidor – backcountry skis with steel edges. I had used them on many tours – from short half-day trips to multi-day winter tours with pulka and tent. They had become quite worn and battered, therefore I bought a new pair some weeks ago, including new boots. Now it was time to test them.
The test went very well, but the ski track around the lake we didn’t find. So we went cross-country and returned after a while. The way back was much faster because we could follow our own tracks and didn’t have to navigate.
The next day was grey but quite calm. We took the car to the Bagarstugan, starting point of the ski tracks in Saxnäs. The ski tracks weren’t prepared yet but some minutes later we met a man that was about to start the preparation. The classical tracks are prepared by snow mobile, the broader skating tracks by snowcat. So finally we were lucky to have our cross country ski premiere on a freshly cut track. Great!
Annika invited me to dinner and we decided to walk the 2 km from my piano tuner’s house to the hotel. Good to have some motion before and after dinner. We passed the closed village shop and soon approached the hotel. Urgently recommended: reflex vests to be seen by the cars.
Beside of the employees we were completely alone in the large hotel restaurant. It’s still pre-season.
Now I’m back in Skelleftehamn. The road is icy and wet from last night’s rain. The average of the max temperature forecast for the next 9 days: +1.3 °C. Come on, winter, where are you!?
| English | German |
|---|---|
| polar stratospheric cloud | Perlmuttwolke |
After two weeks with warmer temperatures, rain and a lot of fog it has become colder again and last night it started to snow. 15 cm fresh snow has already fallen.
Thursday, 16:55: -7.6 °C and it’s still snowing. Looks like I need gloves and a cap for jogging. And of course a headlamp, because sunset was already three hours ago.
One hour later. 40 minutes of (slow) jogging through the wintry landscapein the dark. Exhausting, but beautiful!
My car tracks from this morning are mostly snowed over. The latest tracks are not from a car, but a snowmobile. Now I hope, that the great people of the Friluftsfrämjandet Skelleftehamn soon prepare the illuminated ski track. I’m longing for some afterwork cross-country skiing.
After having my kayak in my living room – just for thawing and drying – I decided that this living concept has no future. Today I moved it into the garage. That was quite easy, because over night fell round about 10 cm fresh snow and I could pull it behind me like a sledge.
It’s 9th and 10th of November. That sounds like autumn but it’s full winter in Skelleftehamn, although there is little snow. The temperatures this weekend are between -8 °C and -9 °C but the lively gusty wind makes it feel more like -18 °C.¹
I was out several times to check how long the winter has come.
When I paddled by Tjuvkistan last Sunday I’m sure that there was open water. Now the whole harbour is covered with dark ice and snow is drifting over the frozen surface.
Outside the harbour the sea is open, but each time a waves rolls ashore it leaves a bit of ice round the rocks and stones. The waves also have formed ice balls that drift back and forth in the cold water.
Last Sunday I had first to slide over the ice with my kayak, but then there was open water. Not anymore – the Sea between the island Storgrundet and the beach Storgrundet is completely icebound.
Right before the bridge, where the current is greatest, the water is open. The rest of the river seems to be covered with ice as well. (On Sunday I even see the first people on the ice, pretty far away from shore.)
The sea water level is quite low: -50 cm. The slowly dropping water level and the waves leave icicles in different forms around the larger rocks. Days ago they were surrounded by water, now they are on dry land.
Yesterday there was mostly open water, not there are ice floes, turning and colliding in the waves. They build the so-called pancake ice. When it stays cold, it will freeze together.
The shallow bay by the camping ground in Bureå is partly covered with thick ice. It snows and the wind tugs at my fur-trimmed hood. 100 Meter away I see waves splashing against the ice shield building small hills of ice.
8 – Home game: Kallholmsfjärden
It’s round 18:00 and it would be pitch black if the industry of Rönnskär would not illuminate the low hanging snow clouds. I kneel in the water to make photos from the ice covered rocks and jetsam. The last photos of the weekend.
Here’s a map of the locations. Bureå is further south and not on the map.
¹ Skelleftehamn: -9 °C. If you think, that’s cold for early November check out that: Karesuando yesterday: -29.4 °C. That was surpassed today: Nikkaluokta: -34.5 °C!
Today was the first “real” winter day. Some more snow fell last night and today it was subzero the whole day with temperatures round -5 °C and a lot of sun.
Now I’m longing for the start of the ski season.
The second image with the blue sky and the snow covered trees is a bit special: it’s made through the window of my current office. What you cannot see: behind the trees is the European Route E4. But anyway, there are worse views.