Ski tour in Sweden – Singi—Sälka Mar 17 2024

This article is part of the series “2024-02: Ski tour Sweden”.

Tour day 3 + 4: 29 February – 1 March

Day 3 – 29 February – Singi—Sälka

Today is our second tour day. We will go north from Singi to Sälka. It is seven o’clock and beautiful out there. If the forecast is right that might change round noon where wind gusts of 16 m/s where expected.

This is why we decided to start early despite the short distance of 12 km. At 8:00 we leave Singi behind. The way is a bit hilly but relatively easy. We pass the Sami village Goržževuolli and then the bridge over the river Tjäktjajåkka. Here goes the summer trail to the cabin Hukejaure in the west. Not our destination today.

The weather is still nice, the sight perfect, navigating is simple. So we do not follow the winter road which lies to the right but just ski in the middle of the large U-shaped valley Tjäktjavagge. This leads to some confusion when we cross a winter trail marked with the traditional red crosses, but this is the snowmobile trail to Hukejaure, not the winter trail to Sälka which is not visible from here. The valley is broad and slightly hilly. We both can “climb” hills since we have skins under our skis but sometimes I go a detour when it gets too steep for pulling up the pulka.

When will Sälka come into sight? Behind the next hill? No. But the next one? No. Then the next? No.

At 11:30 it gets windy and snow is blowing above the ground. But first we have it in the back and then we are already quite close to Sälka and after another hill (we didn’t count) there there they are: the cabins of Sälka.

Sälka will be crowed tonight. 38 guests have pre-booked, amongst others two larger groups. We are extremely lucky to come early and to get the small two-bed room marked with a sign “private” at the door. Thanks a lot, warden Z.!

Our “private” room for the next two days.

Now it has become quite windy. All other guest arrive from the north and are equipped with balaclava and ski goggles to cope the head wind.

The toilets at Sälka are 200 metres away. So take your down parka and a head torch with you if you go at night.

Night – Sälka

And yes, I was out to go the loo several times. But I like winter weather, so I do not complain. And then when I have to go again at three o’clock the sky has become clear and the first northern lights on our tour cover the starry sky. Beautiful, especially with the low hanging moon.

The first photo by the way shows the toilets.

Day 4 – 1 March – Sälka

Another resting day according plan. We have the luxury of having time for the tour that many others have to perform within a week.

A snowmobile has arrived. One of the groups had booked luggage transport. Here only the local Sami are allowed to drive snowmobile. We chat with the driver that shows us some of his reindeers that graze high up in the mountains. Do you see them on the photo below?

He also asks if we have seen wolverine tracks. These vicious animals kill reindeers as pray. But here and now a wolverine is around that attacks the animals without killing. Tome of them have a slow and cruel death. The Sami are not allowed to hunt wolverines due to species protection but they are allowed to scare them away. How the paw prints look like? “Like a fox on snowshoes.”

While he is telling us that either I or Annika are occupied by scratching the dog that cannot get enough of it.

Wolverines are endangered species and the biologists are interested in them. At the same time only the Sami are allowed to drive snowmobile in this part of the mountains. This leads to the curious situation that they collect wolverine droppings for the scientists, of course with proper metadata as time and location. Imagine you have a predator around threatening your flock and at the same time you collect its poo!

The rest of the day: Sawing logs and chopping some wood. Taking some photos. Early dinner to avoid the big group cooking at the same time. Sauna! Retreating to our room when the combined kitchen/living room is too crowded. Early bedtime.

Vacation.

Ski tour in Sweden – Kebnekaise—Singi Mar 16 2024

This article is part of the series “2024-02: Ski tour Sweden”.

Tour day 1 + 2: 27 February – 28 February

It has been four years since Annika and I went on a ski tour. In winter 2021 we didn’t travel because of Covid, in winter 2022 I joined an arctic expedition and in winter 2023 I worked on Svalbard and we went on vacation there. But now it is 2024 and finally we have the opportunity to go on a winter tour.

Prologue

On Sunday, 25. February I take the car from Tromsø to Kiruna. In the back of the car: My skis, all stuff for a two-week winter tour and a pulka. It has been a good choice to take the car because an ore train has derailed between Narvik and Abisko the day before and the railway line is closed (and will be until end of May).

On Monday Annika arrives by train. We buy some extra provisions for the tour such as salami, crisp bread and chocolate and then went to the hotel where we stay over night

On Tuesday we pack the car, take an early breakfast and then go off to Nikkaluokta, a Sami Village and our starting point for the tour. We would have skied the 19 km to the Kebnekaise Mountain Station but it is still closed. Luckily there is another way to get there …

Day 1 – 27 Feb – Nikkaluokta—Kebnekaise—Singi

The family business Sarri AB offers snowmobile transport to Kebnekaise. You can pre-book it. Soon we sit in the surprisingly comfortable trailer and are dragged to the start of the trail to Singi, our first tour destination. Our thick down jackets keep the frost outside.

From there it is 14 km to Singi. The weather is more than fair: blue sky, hardly any wind, frosty but not too cold. Annika is carrying a backpack, I am pulling a pulka.

We are skiing westwards. Beside of a moose and some crows we are alone. Clouds have gathered and the dull light made the mountains look sublime, unreachable and a bit hostile.

Head wind has come up and the sight has worsened a bit. Still we can see far, but the snow is harder to read. Is it hard? Or soft? Does it go up? Or down? It just looks white.

I’ve been here before in winter and I am waiting the cabins of Singi to come into view but it takes longer than expected. Anyhow we finally pass some ice fields …

… and then we can see Singi! After a while we arrive there and are greeted by one of the stugvärder – the wardens. We get hot juice and may choose a room, since there are only two other guests. The rest of the day is mostly eating and sleeping.

Day 2 – 28 Feb – Singi

We have tvelwe days in the Swedish mountains but only eight planned tour days. That leaves four break days, one of them being today.

In this cabin at Singi we stayed for two nights

The morning looks quite promising. Parts of the sky is clear again, parts are cloudy. Some of the clouds move through the valleys which can look quite dramatic.

After breakfast Annika and I take a small tour to the Sami village Goržževuolli (or Kårtjevuolle). On the way there we find an interesting paw print:

It is a paw print of a reindeer, but raised. When it went there it compacted the snow under its foot. Then wind came up and blew away the loose powder snow round the print but not the compacted one.

We pass Singi’s water hole. If you do not want to melt snow (tastes awful) you have to fetch water there. Singi is famous for having the water hole quite far away. If I remember correctly it is 800 metres away (and ca. 25 metres down). We are lucky, the other guests have already fetched a lot of water.

We continue to the village which is only inhabited occasionally. There are a lot of wooden cabins and sheds but there are also some traditional goahtis. Goahtis can be built from different materials, this one is probably built of peat moss and timber:

We look around, enjoy the sun and made a large turn to head back to “our” cabin. Later I am out again to take some photos.

In the evening Annika prepares dinner. While a lot of other people we will meet the next days use to eat “outdoor meals”, which is more or less quite expensive powder we have the luxury of having other food with us. It’s potatoes, feta cheese, onions and sweet peppers. Now fresh – too heavy, too bulky – but home-dried by Annika within the last weeks. Then with the help of fresh garlic, butter and vegan egg-powder (all in our provisions) Annika cooks a tasty frittata for dinner. I understand the point of light-weighted food but this stuff is so much better! Delicious! Tack för maten – Annika. Thanks for the food. Anyhow we can eat this kind of food only on our break days because the dried ingredients have to be covered with water for hours to rehydrate before being used.

After lunch Annika is reading, I am writing my travel diary then we head to our beds and fall fast asleep. Next day we will continue to Sälka, our next cabin.

Back from a ski tour in the Swedish mountains Mar 10 2024

This article is part of the series “2024-02: Ski tour Sweden”.

Just some first photos from Annika’s and my ski tour in the Swedish mountains, that we went on the last two weeks. I will write some articles and show more photos within the next weeks.

Kebnekaise—Singi—Sälka—Tjäktja—Alesjaure—Vistas—Nallo—Vistas—Lisas Stuga

A nightly snowwalk Feb 20 2024

I woke up at 4:20 and since it still snowed I decided to to go out to take a photo. Or two. Taking a photo – or two – became a longer promenade in the snowy neighbourhood.

Just some photos before I continue sleeping. My sleeping room is behind the window behind the bush on the second photo. You see it?

For the stats: Last Saturday 90 of snow were measured at the meteorological station Tromsø PLU. Now it’s 128.4 cm.

Almost like a ski tour Feb 18 2024

When I look at these photos it looks like I’ve been on a multi-day ski tour. Deep snow, packed pulka, white mountains, snowy forests, a snowed in cabin, a cosy fire in the oven. And more snow.

But these photos do not come from a long ski tour but from five different locations nearby. Some are on Tromsøya, some on Kvaløya and the photos were taken within the last two weeks.

1. A short ski tour near Håkøybotn, Kvaløya.

I was tired, I was lazy, I was in a couch potato mood. Anyhow I managed to take the car to the Håkøybotn graveyard to do a little ski promenade up the hills. The snow was fluffy and when I was almost back at the car I realised, that it was quite deep too in some places, when I put off my skis …

2. Sunrise

Last Saturday I could see how the sun slowly started to illuminate the snowy mountains on the island Kvaløya in the morning. What’s special about this is that I took these photos from the balcony of my new flat. Yes, it’s a 600mm telephoto shot and the photos are slightly blurry but that doesn’t reduce the experience standing there and watching the daylight appear.

3. Pulka test tour

The last ski tour I did was with Annika in 2020. In 2021 Covid prevented a tour. In 2022 I was on my first arctic cruise instead. In 2023 I worked on Svalbard for a week and we had vacation there.

But our next ski tour is just a week away. So the question was – does my pulka sledge still work? So I tested it last Sunday and everything seems to be ok. Nice!

4. A cozy fire in the oven

Back home I changed clothes and fired the oven in my cozy new flat. I don’t use it for heating, but for hygge.

5. Today’s ski tour

It has snowed quite a lot and last night the official snow depth exceeded 100 cm for the first time this winter. I put on my skis already on my parking place and skied up to the forest, where I first followed the tracks and then went “off-piste” though the forest. The snow was so fluffy that I couldn’t see my skis anymore. There were somewhere under 30 cm of snow.

Now the days are getting longer and longer and when I’m back from our ski tour I guess I can just do such shorter ski trips right after work.

Bonus

There are three holes in the photo grid shown at the beginning of the article. Time for three more photos. Why I didn’t put them into the grid? Because they do not look like ski tour photos. I made them on different shore locations on the island Kvaløya on my way back from the ski tour two weeks ago. Here they come:

Wind and weather Feb 3 2024

Friday, 26 January

I took this photo at two o’clock in the afternoon just after I had walked home from work. I enjoyed my new apartment and the view from the balcony.

But I knew, that this beautiful weather wouldn’t last. The forecast predicted rain and storm.

Saturday, 27 January

In the evening the weather already had changed. It good warmer, rain clouds covered the moon and the speed of the hardest gust was wind was 24 m/s¹.

28 January

On Sunday the wind calmed down a bit but the forecast for the next day showed wind gusts of 36 m/s in the afternoon. That’s Beaufort 12 – “hurricane-force”. I wasn’t the only one who decided to work from home the next day.

29 January

And the weather became really nasty, although not as bad as expected. I was glad to be able to stay inside anyhow.

Let’s not forget, that Tromsø lies sheltered on the island Tromsøya surrounded by mountain chains. There are other places that are much more exposed to the elements. For example Torsvåg lies on a small island west of Vannøya. There the strongest wind gusts were round 41 m/s².

1 February

After two calmer yet warmer and very rainy days another storm had arrived, this time with gusts up to 30.8 m/s in Tromsø³.

Laughable the people in Kvaløyfjellet på Sømna probably would say. There the average wind speed between 1 and 2 in the night was 54.4 m/s (196 km/h)! That’s a new wind record for whole Norway⁴. And the gusts exceeded 60 m/s.

The nice thing: After all that rain in Tromsø it snowed again. When I arrived home the wind has already calmed down but the entry of my flat was caked in snow.

2 February

And the next morning it still snowed.

When I walked home today I crossed the cemetery. And there everything was snowed in and many tombstones were completely hidden under the snow. As if rain and storm never happened.

___
¹ https://www.yr.no/nb/historikk/graf/1-305409/Norge/Troms/Troms%C3%B8/Troms%C3%B8?q=2024-01-27
² https://www.yr.no/nb/historikk/graf/5-90800/Norge/Troms/Karls%C3%B8y/Torsv%C3%A5g%20fyr?q=2024-01-29
³ https://www.yr.no/nb/historikk/graf/5-90490/Norge/Troms/Troms%C3%B8/Troms%C3%B8%20LH?q=2024-02-01
⁴ https://www.nrk.no/nyheter/ny-vindrekord-i-norge-1.16744736

Obbola—Boliden—Kusfors—Obbola Jan 7 2024

Just some photos from a car trip to Boliden and Kusfors to visit good friends this weekend. Temperatures: everything between -13 and -28 °C.

Cottage holiday Dec 15 2023

Last Saturday Annika came from Sweden. On Sunday we took the car to the cottage that the Norwegian Polar Institute and the Institute for Marine Research share. We got it from Sunday till today afternoon (which is Thursday).

Monday

The sun won’t rise again before January and daylight is limited, especially when it is snowing. We took the car to the peninsula Sommarøya, bought some groceries in the local store and took some snowy photos in the small harbour.

The rest of the day – taking a nap, firing the oven and preparing dinner.

Tuesday

The sky was clear and the temperature had dropped. Perfect conditions for taking a ski tour along the lake Kattfjordvatnet. The light was beautiful and we were lucky to find some kind of track that we could follow. But who made this track? It was too narrow for a snow mobile and too wide for a pulka sledge. Later we realised that this was a track for a dog sledding. Several times we let the dog sleds pass before we continued to follow the track by ourselves. I was glad about my warm, woollen mittens with temperatures between -10 and -15 °C.

Later at home I let my drone fly to make some photos of the cabin. Look! It is in the middle of nowhere!

Well – not really. The cottage is quite near the road although the way up through the snow is pretty steep.

The time of the polar night is a lot about colours. First the incredible orange and pink colours of sky and mountains and then the polar lights if you are lucky. We were!

Wednesday

We took a small tour to Brensholmen and Hillesøy, places that are quite near by car. It was chilly and windy. A small boat approached, heading to the small harbour of Brensholmen. From here goes the ferry to the island Senja and from here you can see the bridge to Sommarøya with the island Tussøya in the background.

We continued the road, saw some reindeers and the sky that became more and more orange. No drone photos, it was too windy.

When we were home again we spend a part of the evening (and some part of the night) in front of the house, because the polar lights were amazing. They covered more or less the whole sky and were constantly moving in ribbons, garlands and swirls. I took some photos, but mostly Annika and I just watched this celestial spectacle.

So you see that in Northern Norway the time of the polar night (the mørketid) is not as dark as many believe and quite colourful. The days are just pretty short, but this time of the year is so beautiful!

A Saturday “mørketid” promenade Dec 3 2023

Since Tuesday, 28 November the sun does not rise above the horizon anymore in Tromsø. In English this time is called Polar Night, in German Polarnacht.But is it night 24 hours a day? No, not really. Here are some images I took on a promenade in Tromsø yesterday. The photos have been shot between 10:48 and 12:13 CET.

Mainland mountains and floodlight from a soccer ground nearby

As you see it was not dark at all. The Norwegians differentiate better and have two words. What we have in Tromsø now they call Mørketid – “darkness time”. The sun is below the horizon the whole day, but less than 6° (civil twilight). Only when the sun is below 6° all day the Norwegians call it polarnatt – “polar night” as well. This however never happens on mainland Europe. You would have to travel north to the island Bjørnøya or the archipelago Svalbard to experience that.

So yes, we have seven weeks of mørketid in Tromsø, but that does not mean seven weeks of darkness. Fortunately!

From the shadow into the sun Nov 19 2023

It has snowed quite a bit in Tromsø the last days and the snow depth measured this morning was 50 cm. The weather was fair and so there was no reason for me not to start the back country skiing season today.

I take the car to the parking at the Finnvikdalen on the island Kvaløya, where I started some other day trip ski tours the last years. I arrive at nine o’clock and am first. I change boots and jackets, put on gloves, mount the skis and off I go. The snow is fresh and fluffy and I guess that I won’t see my skis today a lot when I don’t follow another track.

First my skis sink 10–20 cm into the snow, later it will be more like 20–40. When I approach an old ski track covered in snow I decide to follow it. Where it will bring me? I’ll see.

At the beginning the track winds through the sparse birch forests. Everything looks quite grey and dull in the dim twilight.

When I however look back I see the first colour in the sky: A thin red cloud.

Twenty minutes later the southeastern sky is filled with the colours of sunrise. Which is no surprise, because it is actually sunrise. Somewhere far away behind the mountains of the mainland.

I continue following the old track. Looks like someone dragged a pulka behind. On one of the hills I spot a cabin. It is Stillvannsbua, a hut open for everyone and a popular tour destination.

The track passes the cabin and so do I. Shortly after I meet a guy with a pulka. Probably he tented somewhere around. Was it him making this track? Probably, because soon it ends and I continue on areas of loose, untouched snow. Exhausting but beautiful.

On a lot of places the snow under my skis reacts with a loud, muffled noise and the snow sinks down a centimetre or two. The noise spreads in all directions for one or two seconds, a clear sign that the snow is quite unstable. But I’m in the midst of a valley– no avalanche risk here. When I reach the end of a valley I do not dare to proceed to steeper terrain but turn back. I am exhausted anyhow.

On my way back I still cannot see the sun. It is too low to be visible from here. The sky however is even more colourful and then it even starts to snow a bit. Snow and sun – one of my favourite weathers.

Some higher mountains are already sunlit …

And then there it is – the sun! It just appeared from behind a mountain.

All of a sudden the snow is not a featureless white but you can see every feature of the surface. The snowy land has got its colours back.

Everything that is lit by the low sun now shines in the most beautiful warm colours and I enjoy every moment of it. It is only nine other days, then the sun won’t rise again in Tromsø before 16 January. Polar night.

Now I’m not alone any more. A lot of skiers come towards me, many of them with a dog that pulls the skier. Three hours after I have started the tour I arrive at the parking again. The tour was short – just 7½ km – but the main thing was achieved: having been out in the wonderful nature that surrounds Tromsø.