Torghatten Oct 2 2016

This article is part of the series “2016-09: Jämtland and Norway”.

16. September

After our five day hiking tour in the Swedish Mountains a week of Annika’s and my holiday was left. We entered the car and left Storulvån. Shortly before we approached the E14 I asked Annika: “Back to Umeå or Norway?” The answer was: “Norway”. So we travelled to Norway …

19. September

After visiting friends near Mosvik we decided to drive north to Mo I Rana, but neither on the direct way, nor on a single day. We made a two-day stopover in a fantastic cottage between Torget and Brønnøysund. On the other day we drove to Torghatten, a mountain in the south of the same island. There’s something special with this mountain: It has a huge hole. From the parking place at the foot of the mountain a path leads up to the hole and through the natural tunnel to the other side. We slipped into our boots, took the cameras and went up.

Some photos:

We put ourselves on a large stone and looked at the landscape behind: The rocky slope, the tiny red farm house, the beaches and the sea with its many islands. We could have continued on that path, which leads further, but then we had to go round the whole mountain on a gravel path at the end. So we just returned the same way.

An impressive tour, that doesn’t take much time. Don’t miss it when you’re near Brønnøysund. And take your wide-angle lens with you!

Jämtland hike part II: hejdå Sweden, hei Norge! Sep 25 2016

This article is part of the series “2016-09: Jämtland and Norway”.

Annika and I are in the mountains in Jämtland and have just reached our first destination: Blåhammaren, where we slept in a 14-bed room.

Tuesday, 13. September

Sleeping in a 14-bed room can be quite demanding, especially if you have this kind of snorers in your room, that could awake a frozen mammoth. However Annika and I were really lucky, no snorers at all! After our breakfast we had to decide where to continue our tour. From Blåhammaren you can hike back to civilisation or continue to two other destinations. Most of the hikers continue to Sylarna which is very central and part of the Jämtland Triangle, a very popular three-day-tour, that connects Storulvån, Blåhammaren and just Sylarna. We were keener to cross the border and hike to the Norwegian lodge Storerikvollen and so we did.

With an altitude of 1086 m Blåhammaren is the highest tourist station of the STF – the Swedish Tourist Association – so first the trail ran over the treeless mountain plateau, over rocks and moss, crossing some swamps and brooks. After a while we descended and the first yellow coloured birch trees came into view again.

Swedish summer trails are marked with red coloured dots on rock or tree, while winter trails are marked with poles bearing red crosses. You really shouldn’t follow the winter trails in summer unless you want to stand in front of a lake or find yourself deep in a bog – both are easy to cross only in wintertime. But quite often there’s a year round trail which makes navigation extremely easy even on less walked routes.

One kilometre behind Endalen, an emergency shelter, where we rested for a short while, the Sweden-Norwegian border came into view. It’s hard to mark a border less spectacularly than this one: A sign amidst of a pile of yellow painted stones, that’s it. The large bridge that crosses the river Enan (Sami: Äjnänjohke) directly after the border offers far more spectacularity.

We detected a real nice resting place on the other side of the river, where we planned to enjoy the warm summerly weather, but two other hikers – by the way the first ones we met that day – coming from the other side chose exactly the same slab of rock to rest. Luckily we found another place, at least as nice as the first one. We unmounted our backpacks, took of our boots and dangled our feet into the ice-cold water.

(I like the photo with the drifting yellow birch leave and the dead mosquito. It illustrates, why I prefer the autumn to summer: Beautiful colours and no biting insects left!)

Autumn symbols: falling leaved and dead mosquito

In Norway the summer trail marks change, now the trail was marked with big bright red T-s. The red T is also the logo of the DNT, the Norwegian Trekking Association.

Do you see the dark piece of something on the top of the stone? It’s animal droppings, but I’m not sure of which species. I asked for help on Facebook and the favourite answers are reindeer and (arctic) fox.

We continued our tour until we came to another swing bridge, this time crossing the river Djupholma. On the other side of that river lies a nice sandy beach where I took a refreshing bath (the only one of the whole tour). It was only two other kilometres to walk to our destination, the cabin Storerikvollen, where we arrived round six o’clock.

A steep swing bridge crossing the river Djupholma

Oh, so nice these Norwegian lodges are. They seem less “funkis” (the Swedish functional style) and more “hyggelig” (the Norwegian word for cozy, snug, or homelike). Just gemütlich! And we got a two-bed-room for a good price. The only thing you should know, when you visit the Norwegian side: These cabins hardly sell any food and there is no public kitchen as in the Swedish cabins. So you have three options: (1) take a camp stove with you and cook outside. (2) cold dishes! Hopefully you have all with you. (3) eat the dinner and breakfast provided by the lodges (and pay the Norwegian price).

We chose (2) and had a nice dinner with salami, crisp bread and fresh water outside in the evening sun, enjoying both our simple meal, the warm air and the beautiful view. Later the almost full moon rose above the reddish mountain chain – what a beautiful evening!

Wednesday, 14. September

The next day would lead us to the Nedalshytta, which is between 20 and 24 km away, depending on which map or sign post you rely on. So we got up quite early.

We had to go back yesterdays route 2 or 3 km where the trail divided. Now we turned south and had to ascent. Soon again we were above the treeline. When we looked back, we could see parts of the big lake Essandsjøen and even spotted – beside of some reindeers – the now tiny Storerikvollen, that we left some ours ago.

After a while we came to the river Fiskåa, where we had to ford. My rubber boots were high enough and I just splashed through the water, whereas Annika changed boots with trekking sandals and waded through the river.

Since rivers use to flow through valleys we had to ascend again and walked up along a reindeer fence. The weather was still warm and sunny, but you could see a cloud layer approaching afar. Would it rain in the evening as the forecast told us?

Only the map showed us the progress of our longest tour so far. We went a bit up, a bit down, a bit to the left, a bit to the right, down a small valley and up again. But finally trees came into view once more and soon we stood on an exposed plateau not far away from the yet invisible Nedalshytta.

Come on, just less than a kilometre to go … . Final spurt! A short while later we arrived at the beautiful lodge. Again we got a nice two-bed room, this time right below the grass roof. And we got: pizza! Perhaps not the best I ate in my life, but walk 20 – 24 kilometres with a backpack by yourself and you’ll know, how delicious a warm pizza slice can be!

View from our room. To the left: the grass roof

The tour so far:

Continue with part three …

Picking cloudberries Aug 7 2016

One week ago I still was in Mosvik in Norway. On Saturday we went out to pick cloudberries. These berries that look a bit like orange raspberries are rich in taste and very healthy due to the high amount of vitamin C and trace elements. There’s only one disadvantage: They can be quite hard to pick.

First of all they prefer wet and swampy soil. Then they ripe in July, the heyday of mosquitos and biting horseflies. Then they grow quite solitary – one berry here, one over there.

H., J., F. and I were quite lucky last Saturday when we collected two buckets of these little delicacies for it rained almost the whole day. And much rain means less mosquitos. When we came home, A. directly started to make jam from our collected cloudberries. One glass of jam I took home. It is still closed and I will save it for later. I love cloudberries!

Translation:

English	German	Swedish	Norwegian
cloudberry	Moltebeere	hjortron	multe

757.5 – from Mosvik to Skelleftehamn by car Aug 2 2016

Last week I’ve been in Mosvik (Norway) to visit friends. Yesterday I drove back home, not directly but with a detour via Nordli and Røyrvik (Norway) and Stekenjokk, (Sweden).

According to google maps the direct way is 671 km, taking 8 h 38 min. With the detour it is only 67 km, but 1 h 46 min longer. That says a lot about the small and steep gravel roads near the Swedish–Norwegian border …

For me the journey didn’t take 10.5 hours, but more than 15. For one thing I don’t drive fast, especially in Norway and for another thing I took many smaller rests for taking pictures as well as a lunch and a dinner break. I left at 9 o’clock; at quarter past midnight I finally was home again. Total distance by car: 757.5 km.

See my travelogue of the journey by clicking the first image and navigating through the images. Swipe on touch devices and click or use arrow keys on other computers.

km 10 – Skarnsundbroa near Mosvik crossing the Skarnsundet.

km 57 – the town Steinkjer. 22000 inhabitants and a sandy beach.

km 99 – European route E 6. 3140 km long. Trelleborg (Sweden) — Kirkenes (Norway)

km 136 – The beginning of the Medølaveien.

km 166 – The valley Sanddøldalen. A nature reserve.

km 175 – Parking place for the mountain regions Blåfjella and Skjækerfjella.

km 205 – a shop in Nordli. Time to renew the provisions.

km 211 – Entering Sweden, but only for some kilometres.

km 230 – swampy ground near Limingdalen.

km 285 – again the Swedish border. Now I really left Norway.

km 322 – Vildmarksvägen (The Wilderness Road).

km 334 – Stekenjokk. Almost the highest point of the Vildmarkvägen.

km 348 – Looking back to the mountains. Patches of snow.

km 354 – the lake Kultsjön near Klimpfjäll. Crazy colours.

km 375 – the lake Kultsjön near Södra Stornas. It rains.

km 457 – Skansholm. The sky is clearing up.

km 474 – Kolgårdens Stugby. What a nice place, but why is the restaurant closed?

km 479 – Vilhelmina. Taking a rest and eating a pizza.

km 551 – A boggy pond near Vinliden. It start’s getting darker.

km 631 – Rokåberg. The roads are much less bended than in Norway.

km 757 – Skelleftehamn, Rönnskar. Just 600 meters to drive, then I’m home.

By the way: After nineteen articles without any photo with snow, this is the first article showing at least some patches of snow again.

A trip above the treeline Jul 30 2016

Today the weather was really nice in Venneshamn in Norway. I took the car to drive to a mountain area not far away. At least, if you can fly … . If you take the car in Norway, there’s always at least one fjord you have to drive round, in this case the Verrasundet. So it took a bit longer than excepted taking the ways 191, 193 and 720 round the fjord. Finally I approached the street to the lake Ormsetvatnet. Street, well … it’s more like a steep gravel path, that you can drive up some kilometres to a parking place. The last kilometre to the lake is closed for cars and I had to walk it.

At Ormsetvatnet I crossed a dam wall, walked up a tree covered slope and soon was above the treeline. To be honest, I’m not too fond of forests, when it comes to taking pictures and I’m always glad, when I leave the trees behind when doing a mountain trip.

Now I was on a hilly plateau, the Vakkerheia. Some of the flat mountain tops were marked with piles of stones.

In the plain valley between the hilly tops the ground is soft and wet. Sometimes I had to go round shallow ponds and bogs, but mostly the ground was easy to go. In and round the swampy ponds the cotton grass was blooming. To my big delight there were many cloudberries plants growing in the lesser wet parts and the berries were ripe and ready to eat!

Picking cloudberries can be tedious, because of the many bloodthirsty horseflies that seem to guard them. I think, I slew most of them, but some bit me anyway.

After some hours of a really relaxed mountain hike I took another way back until I came to the gravel road again, where my parked car waited for me.

Half a day later

A thunderstorm approaches from the west. The center seems to be above the very same area that I wandered some hours earlier. The thunder and lightnings were as impressive as the intense colours, that I could see from the other side of the fjord. I was glad, that I haven’t been on that plateau – there would be hardly any place to seek shelter from the massive rain fall or to protect from the dangerous lightnings.

Addendum

And since we’re living in the age of selfies …

Moon jelly Jul 25 2016

Aurelia aurita · moon jelly · Ohrenqualle · öronmanet

It’s nice to snorkel at the west coast of Norway.

In opposite to the Bothnian Bay – that’s the northernmost part of the Baltic Sea – where I live, here are crabs, starfishes, forests of seaweed as well as many shells and conches. And there’s jellyfish, too. Seeing a jellyfish underwater is fascinating, but I was glad that all belonged to the speciesmoon jelly, a species that doesn’t sting.

Translations:

English	German	Swedish
starfish	Seestern	sjöstjärna
jellyfish	Qualle	manet
moon jelly(fish), common jellyfish	Ohrenqualle	öronmanet

Sweden blue, Norway grey? Jul 23 2016

Sometimes it’s fun to use clichés. Yesterday there was such an opportunity on my way from Umeå, Sweden to Mosvik, Norway.

A neighbour once told me that it’s so beautiful in Norway. More beautiful than in Sweden! But he quickly added: “But we (in Sweden) have the better weather”. Perhaps he’s right. The whole way from Umeå was warm and sunny with some stratus clouds, but western from Åre, when I approached Norway I felt like driving into the dark grey landscape of another continent:

And then the rain showers came. Sometimes it just poured down so much, that the windscreen wipers hardly managed to shovel the rain from the windscreen. But I have to be fair:

It’s not the country that creates this type of weather, it’s the mountains and the Norwegian Sea. The photo is still made in Sweden, 40 km from the Norwegian border. And when I left the mountains behind, the sun came out again and laid a wonderful soft and warm light onto the landscape.

Torneträsk and Port of Narvik Mar 27 2016

On thursday – three days ago – Annika and I drove to Abisko to enjoy some winter days in the Swedish mountains. Skelleftehamn is in Northern Sweden, Abisko is in Northern Sweden, but it’s still 570 km to go by car.

Yesterday I stood up quite early, because the sun was shining and I wanted to go onto the lake Torneträsk (one of Sweden’s biggest lakes – 70 km long) to make some photos. The whole lake is covered by a thick layer of ice and a thin layer of snow.

In the front you can see stacked up ice that builds along the fissures in the sheet of ice, in the background you can see Lapporten – the landmark of the region.

After a while fog came down and when you looked against the sun you only could see vague shades and pale colours. It looked more like standing in a sandy desert, not on the icy surface of the Torneträsk.

Some hours later: Annika and I had planned to do a ski tour near the Swedish-Norwegian border. We packed the car with our skis, cameras and hot tea and set off. It’s 38 km to the border. Behind that border – on the Norwegian side – there’re a lot of cottages and since it’s Easter and probably every single Norwegian is in his cottage there were a lot of parked cars, too.

We looked for a parking place as well. The most parking places were stuffed with cars and were furthermore only for private use. I continued driving and we looked for a public parking place. Well, we found one but the surrounded mountains were too steep for skiing. We stopped anyway to check our position on the map. After that we helped some Norwegians to dig out their car that was completely stuck in the packed snow – on the very same parking place! There’s a reason, that most of the locals have all-terrain vehicles or at least cars with all-wheel drive.

My Saab doesn’t have such and from now on I was even more cautious in choosing a potential place to park. To make a long story short: We didn’t found a single parking place that was (a) available, (b) public, and (c) not too snowy. That’s why we changed plans and continued to Narvik, which is 46 km behind the border.

There’re (at least) three signs for leaving the mountain plateau and approaching Narvik:

The road is narrower
The road has much more curves and bends
It gets much warmer. (down to -9 °C in Sweden, +5 °C near Narvik)

Soon we saw the first fjord, the Rombaken:

We continued to Narvik that seemed to be completely closed due to the Easter Saturday. Therefore we headed to the Port of Narvik and looked around there. Most ports I know are locked and fenced off. Not in Narvik. Here it’s possible to walk around, enter the piers and have a closer look to the ships. And we were completely alone.

Narvik is a huge contrast compared to Abisko! Even if I prefer landscape and nature to towns, I like this place.

But anyway we drove back to the wintry mountains of Swedish Lapland quite soon and round an hour later we arrived again at our fine and cozy room at Abisko Cabin.

Wintry Scandinavia in a nutshell (without the skiing).

Continuing to the Vesterålen Aug 2 2015

This article is part of the series “2015-07: Lofoten and Vesterålen”.

Our third day started with a lot of rain. We put the wet tent into the car and continued our tour to Kabelvåg where we visited a friend of mine. We took a small mountain hike but it was cloudy and wet. Only far away in the east you could see some sunny patches on the top of the snowy mountains.

In the mountains, Kabelvåg in the background

After the hike Delle and I looked for a camp ground. But first I had to take a picture of the beautiful rainbow near Sildpollen.

This time we tented on a bigger campsite in Sandsletta. When I woke up quite early the next day I could see another rainbow over the Vatnfjorden, but later it started to rain and pour down again. And again we put the soaked tent into the car. We continued on the road 888 to Fiskebøl. The clouds were hanging low and you could hardly see any mountain, just some white and light grey schemes.

Soon we arrived in Fiskebøl where we waited for the ferry. Again we were lucky – we waited hardly half an hour until we entered the ferry for the short crossing to Melbu, the southernmost city of the Vesterålen. We visited friends of mine, this time in Haukenes were we tented near the friend’s house. The cocks tried to wake me up ridiculously early, but in vain. I continued sleeping until 8 o’clock.

Alas it was the first morning without rain (and the only one, too) and we could dry the tent. After a long and lazy breakfast with my friends we said farewell and continued our car trip. We got a tip to visit Stø at the northern end of the Vesterålen island Langøya. What a good tip and what a beautiful landscape – especially after the weather was nice and sunny. We made a short photo stop between Strengelvåg and Klo before we continued to Stø.

In Stø we parked our car and took a short hike over the mountains to a beautiful white sanded beach were we made a rest and I took a short bath. There’s a 15 km hiking trail as well; next time I’ll definitely will go it.

After our rest we slowly walked back and continued by car. First we had to head south to Sortland were we crossed the Sortlandsundet and headed north on the other side. The sky became more and more cloudy and we looked for a nice campground. Finally we found one in Bleik, quite near Andenes, a town at the northern end of the Vesterålen. We put up the tent and – guess what – it started to rain.

It had been raining the whole night and it continued raining. Again a soaking wet bunch of a tent lay in the back of the car. After a while of driving through the greyness we decided to head back to Skelleftehamn. It’s more than 900 kilometres and it took the whole day. Rain became less near Abisko and after we passed Jokkmokk the sky cleared up and we could see the full moon slowly rising. The next photo, which is the last of our car trip through the Lofoten and Vesterålen is taken near Storforsen, one of Europe’s biggest rapids. At 23:50 we were in Skelleftehamn again – and I was home.

2296 kilometres in six days
a lot of clouds and rain, but two nice and sunny days, too
one night in the car, four in the tent (three of them on campgrounds)
two bathes and at least four rainbows
– a nice trip!

From Å to Rystad Aug 1 2015

This article is part of the series “2015-07: Lofoten and Vesterålen”.

Day 2

Next morning when we woke up in Å we could see blue sky through the fogged car windows. The rain has stopped. We made a walk through the little fishing village and had breakfast on the cliff with a fantastic view on the mountains and the sea.

After that we continued our trip through the incredible landscape of the Lofoten. We had to stop several times to take pictures, for example of this small mountain lake near the road to Nusfjord:

Later we came to a place that became quite famous over the years: Uttakleiv – a beautiful sandy beach that just invites you to jump into the turquoise-coloured water. It almost looks Caribbean but as soon as you enter the ice cold water you’re reminded of being in Northern Norway, not in the south. The bath was fun, anyway.

Here we stayed for a while and enjoyed the sun. But after a while we continued our road trip to Brenna on the island Austvågøy. We didn’t find a camping ground at the end of the road and turned, but soon we stopped the car again. Actually because I wanted to take pictures of the sheep that lay at the sandy beach, but some children nearby discovered something much more interesting: A fox cub. I changed to the telephoto lens and I came quite near. Probably the fox hadn’t made any bad experiences with humans yet.

After that we stopped at a camping ground near Rystad that we already saw on the way to Brenna and decided to stay overnight. Soon the tent was put up on the grassy ground. Slowly the sun went round the mountains and sank down. The next hours were incredible – the light was so wonderful, both the sunlit main land in the south and the sea in the north glowed in the most fantastic colours. But have a look by yourself:

Round one o’clock we lay down in our tent, but only because clouds came and it started to rain a bit. What a wonderful first day on the Lofoten!