The fell hiking trip

My most sincere apologies for being so slow with the post about the fell hiking trip we made the first week in August, but I have had plenty of things to do, preparing to move to Bristol (only nine days left! iiiiiiih!!), working on the rock collection slideshow (which kind of was more fun that writing this post, so it got priority during days when I was less motivated), and so on... 

But here it is, finally! I hope you can enjoy it anyway!

 

(But first, a reminder about the slideshow of this trip, to help you get into the mood and all… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxfIBqfIqeA)

We travelled by train (a six-hour journey) from Uppsala to a village (whose name I have forgotten completely) close to Vålådalen, which was our starting point. A taxi minibus brought us the rest of the way there.

We started off from the fell station of Vålådalen, a small community of buildings including hotel rooms, a restaurant, a small grocery store. As I have mentioned earlier, there are different approaches to hiking in the fells. Many hikers spend the nights in such stations across the fell, either wandering from station to station or having one as a base point and make shorter daily trips back and forth. We, however, brought tents to sleep outdoors, and supplies for a week to wander around as we wished, camping where we found suitable – more freedom, but more demands.

Setting out, I was in a mixed state of mind: drowsy after the long journey, but high in spirits from the excitement of what to come. You could already see the snow-covered mountains in the distance.

With my hopelessly bad sense of location, I thought it best if I stay away from the map and out of the discussions of where-are-we-now and where-do-we-go-next.

We were not walking around at will, but stuck to a trail, a pre-set path marked both on the maps and in life. There are two main types: winter trails, marked by tall poles with large red crosses on top (so that you can see them when everything is covered by snow), and summer trails, marked only with occasional flecks of red on a rock, tree or sometimes on a bush. The path to our destination – the resting cottage of Lundörrspasset – involved winter, summer and combined trails (with both types of markings, where you can go both in winter as well as in summer).

A winter trail, clearly marked with large, red crosses on poles.

The summer trail markings were only red dots of paint, more or less conspicuous than this one.

The first ten minutes of walking were through a regular, sandy mud terrain with typical vegetation around. However, soon enough, we reached a large bridge over a broad stream.

The water was crystal clear! Even though it probably was less than waist-deep, in normal Swedish lakes or streams, the water is so full of dust and microbes that you can’t see the bottom at that depth, yet, here, the stony riverbed was perfectly visible.

More fantastic, though, was the view to the sides.

It was a perfect place to stay for a while and just enjoy the natural splendour. But we were soon on the move again.

For a long time, we marched through a typical forest area, with only a few unusual obstacles, such as a fallen log at chest height, which was tricky to dodge with our huge backpacks.

Eventually, however, we came to more open terrain.

But, that terrain was soggy wetland. We had to walk on narrow planks to get through dry. (Our boots were water-proof, but only up to the ankles.)

The first day, we walked at a high pace for about three hours, with only a few breaks and never stopping to enjoy the view. Now, to be fair, the view was not fantastic yet: we had only seen forest and wetland so far. Also, if we would stand still for long, the mosquitos would swarm around us (more about bloodsuckers later), and, we needed to make it to a suitable camping site before dark. Still, there were plenty of interesting rocks (including sedimentary ones!!) on the ground, curiously shaped trees, and funny-looking plants and berries here and there. Naturally, I wanted to explore everywhere by the trail, but there was never any opportunity for that – hardly even to take any decent photos. For example, we went past a quite large rock with wonderful patterns of quartz, which I just had to take a picture of, but I could not catch it in its true glory. The picture is still nice, but it does not make that marvellous rock justice.

This is my only true regret about this trip: that I could not take my time to explore the land, not even near as much as I wanted to. It felt even more tragic in the beginning, when there were not even any amazing sights to revel in. It was mainly Pawel pushing us to move on and faster and faster. Pawel has such an insane stamina that he could easily keep his high pace, and probably thought we were just being silly looking so tired! 

It was not until the third day that he realised that we could not continue like this (we were seriously getting too tired and demoralised, much also because it was raining like heck then), and explained that he had had the impression that the point of fell hiking was to get as exhausted as possible so that it would feel so incredibly good when it is over and one finally can rest. I think he now realised that it is not – at least not for us. The idea with this trip for us was to enjoy the natural scenery (and details, in my case) and let the brisk air and exercise refresh our spirits. We were very aware that this involved challenge and exhaustion, but not to that exaggerated point.

After that day, we kept a more humane pace, which I am eternally grateful for. We had anyway reached our goal by then (ooops, spoiled it there!), so we had plenty of time.

But now I have skipped way ahead. There is a lot more to tell about the first two days, so let us go back.

We made our first camp here.

It had a nice fireplace where the others could grill some sausages. More importantly, however, it was close by a stream, which is the only source of drinkable water in the fells. Never drink from a body of standing water unless you know that it is drinkable, because it might be full of nasty microbes and parasites. The streams, however, contain meltwater from snow that accumulates among the mountains in winter. Thus, unless it flows very slowly, there is little risk of organisms getting hold in that water.

On the downside, being near water means tons of mosquitos!

Also, we were lucky to find two suitable sites to raise our tents. The ground was mostly full of scattered rocks, but there were some large enough rock-free spots. Tim and Daniel slept in their good three-man tent, while Pawel and I shared a smaller, considerably more economic two-man tent.

We were even more lucky that we were inside the tents and ready to sleep just when it started to rain. I have always enjoyed the sound of raindrops clattering against a window, but this was even better! Well, let’s just say that the difference was equivalent to upgrading to a surround-sound speaker system. 

The perfection was ruined because I did not sleep in warm enough clothes. The sleeping bag was fine, but it gets pretty cold in the nights in the fell, even in mid-summer. Actually, I froze every night throughout the trip, and that was not very pleasant, I can tell you. So, heed my advice and bring some warm clothes for the night! Another problem was that there was no room to keep my legs in a position that was good for my knees, and that, together with the strain from the long marches with heavy load, has taken its toll on them. I had no pillow, so if I slept on the side – to have my legs reasonably comfortable – my neck was ruined. Therefore, I also urge you to bring a small pillow. Another option is to use a pullover, but I needed them to keep me warm.

In the morning, Tim and Daniel were so sluggish and slow that I had some time to examine rocks in the area. As I mentioned before, I soon suspected that many of the rocks here were sedimentary. It was surprising, since I was under the impression that sedimentary rocks were uncommon in Sweden, especially so far from the coast. But when I thought about it, it made sense: I knew from the geology course that these mountains, part of the Caledonian mountain chain, were formed during a three-front collision between Scandinavia, the British Isles and eastern Greenland, which at that time (late Ordovician to early Devonian) was mostly coastal areas and therefore full of sedimentary rocks. The clash deformed them, to be sure, so the rocks I found are more likely metamorphic, to be precise, but they seem to have derived from sedimentary rock types. (For a brief text about the different rock types, please see the beginning of Hard rock geology at Väddö.) Still, there were some rocks that did not have clearly visible traces of metamorphism (such as parallel bands as signs of compression), so maybe some rocks got away without being deformed? I cannot tell.

I picked up some nice rocks here and there, and more later in the trip. Even though I could not pick up every rock I liked, not as much due to the weight they would add to my load, but because the most truly fascinating specimens I saw while we were walking, and I could not just stop all of a sudden and risk the one behind crashing right into me, and I could not ask them to stop because I want to look at that rock – they wouldn’t understand, just take me for more crazy than they already know I am. Although it pained me, I had to move on, albeit the grief in my heart grew heavier with every day.

But the rocks will be presented among those gathered at home in the rock slideshow to come. Here, I will just present some unusual features among the rocks that were stuck in the ground, or too big to carry.

What first made me suspect that there were sedimentary rocks here was that some rocks were clearly stratified, or layered, which is a typical feature among sedimentary rocks, since they are formed by layers upon layers of sediment, which, eventually cause so much pressure thanks to their sheer weight that they press the layers below them into a hard rock mass. The boundaries between these layers – the bedding planes – are the weakest point in sedimentary rocks, and is therefore where they usually break.

Rocks looking like these were rather common, but this is the only I had the opportunity to take a picture of.

The other striking feature I discovered was truly odd. I saw plenty of rocks looking like this.

They had parallel stripes protruding out from the main rock mass, like inverted furrows. It is hard to think of what might have caused this. It reminds me of similar structures I saw at Väddö.

Those are the result of intrusion and differential weathering (please see the article for a more thorough explanation: Hard rock geology at Väddö), but the rocks in the fell had not been intruded – they consisted of a single rock type, so differential weathering could not have caused this.

I tired to think about them as some form of inverted glacial striations, but it did not make any sense – glaciers could not have done this kind of thing. Perhaps they were moulded in a rock that had furrows or cracks, the lava flowing into and settling in the grooves; it is possible that the mould rock was more easily weathered, and is therefore gone now, leaving only the cast.

While eating breakfast, we made a rather important discovery, not related to geology, but more of a practical matter when it comes to field trip equipment. It seems as if flies are attracted to blue stuff. They were swarming around my blue back pack and Tim an Daniel’s blue tent. But, more disgustingly, they clustered our blue eating utensils.

And worse:

So, a bit of advice: don’t bring blue things when you are hiking!

Eventually, we were all set and got going. The views were better this day.

But the best was when we stopped by a stream and saw not only this:

But this:

(Such a sight is hard to catch justly on picture from so close, but look at it and imagine it ten times more amazing!)

Moving on, eventually we got really tired.

But some of us recovered soon enough.

And now that we were basically out of the forest-dominated area, the landscape changed.

And the trees got weird…

In another thirty minutes or so, we came to a minor fell station, called Lundörrstugorna, the cottages of Lundörren, the last outpost before our final destination, Lundörrspasset. 

We stopped here to prepare our lunch, and eat with a mesmerizing view.

As we moved on, the surroundings got more and more fantastic, and much was thanks to the impressive clouds on the sky, visible now when we were out of the forest.

However, we eventually reached a serious obstacle: a broad stream.

We sent out two scouts (Tim and me) to search further upstream if there was a suitable place to cross without having to take off the shoes and wade.

We found none… but we did find a large accumulation of limestone rocks in the point bar of a meander.

In a meandering (curling) stream, the bank is eroded along the outer flank of the curve (the cut bank), while sediment is deposited by the inner flank (the point bar), simply because the water flows faster in the outer part of a curve. Sediment is dropped when the water flow velocity is too low to keep it in suspension (sort of floating), which usually happens when the stream goes out to more open water, such as a lake, where the stream slope declines sharply (and gravity’s pull on the water diminishes), and at the point bars of meanders.

… Anyway, that was not what was interesting here. It is the limestone! There was a glimpse of hope of finding fossils here!! While Tim looked for a place to cross the stream and solve this problem for us all, I was staring at the rocks on the ground, looking for impressions of long-dead bugs or slugs.

But neither of us found anything. Disappointed, we returned to the others. Soon we were assaulted by a cloud of mosquitos. Now there was no other choice: boots and socks off and wade through cold water across slippery, hard rocks across a strong current. Quickly, before all too many mosquitos got us.

Once across, we had to dry our feet and legs and kill the mosquitos at the same time (not using the towel, for it would get full of smashed blood-sucker corpses. 

But once we were dry and dressed, we got warm again pretty quick. And now the path ahead was pretty straight.

Even though there were little trees and therefore little risk of getting lost, we had to stick to the trail, because the ground was part marshland and part mud with a myriad of hard rocks pointing out. So, we had to watch our steps here as well. And we were getting tired.

But, we needed to find a suitable camping ground, so we were forced to move on.

Just as in a dense forest, it was difficult to sense how far you have walked in a valley, because the other end always seemed ever so distant.

So, now it might be time to talk a little about glaciated valleys. You can tell that a glacier has passed through this valley by its shape, which is markedly different from stream-cut valleys. Running water erosion is confined to its channel bank, and the downward erosion rate is much greater than the erosion sideways, meaning that a valley eroded by a stream deepens markedly faster than it widens, giving the valley a characteristic V-shape. Glaciers, which have relatively little downward erosional power, cannot form their own valleys, but plough through existing valleys, mostly broadening their walls into a U-shape and straightening them lengthwise. You can clearly see the U-shape and the straightness of the valley in the picture above. 

Just like rivers have their tributaries (smaller streams that connect to a river downstream and add to its water flow), glaciers can have smaller glacier tongues branching in or out. Since the main glacier has more glacial ice than the others, and therefore is heavier, its down-cutting force is relatively greater, and, therefore, its valley floor lies deeper than that of tributary glaciers. When the glacier melts, these create so-called hanging walls – valley mouths that seem to hang in the air. If a river flows through a hanging wall, it might form a waterfall.

We found a fair camping spot on the other slope of the valley, roughly opposite to that hanging wall, some hundred metres above the valley floor. It was a nice ground, covered with cushiony vegetation – some weird moss-like thingy – and right next to a purling stream. And the view at sunset was fabulous.

But the air was completely packed with mosquitos! There were more here than we had seen so far in total. The best thing we could do was to put on our face-covering mosquito nets, a hat – with a hood on top of that – and just sit down on the ground and hope that none of the bugs gets through. (This was slightly problematic for me, as I had some acid holes on my trousers where they could sneak in, and my gloves were thin and did not cover my fingers; I sat with my hands under my armpits and waited to smash any mosquito that got through my holes.) I think it was this night we had serious discussions about how to exterminate mosquitos, or at least that scientists should put serious effort into developing some form of EMP-like device to electrocute all mosquitos – and mosquitos only – within a certain radius. (Wiping out all mosquitos could make ecosystems collapse – they are the food base of many birds, for example – but blasting all within you range of annoyance should be just fine.) 

Eventually, we had to eat, though. You can bet that it was tricky to eat when you desperately needed the face-covering net.

Getting into the tent was such a relief. Two mosquitos at the most had gotten in, so we could finally relax. Trust me, after some time you give up entirely about trying to avoid or kill those freaking buggers – they are like a hydra: crush one and two more appear – and just let them bite you; the pain and itch are less excruciating than the constant need to smack yourself all over every ten seconds. Therefore, entering the tent was the only way to avoid the bloody insects, and to lie in there felt as if you had finally woken up from that horrible nightmare.

It rained most of the night, so the next morning the mosquitos were “gone” (meaning there were only a couple of hundred of them out). Looking outside, we saw the cause of the rain.

Moist, cold air had blown through the valley. When air blows against a mountain, the sloped obstacle makes it rise. Air gets cooler as it rises (at least in the first 10 km of the atmosphere), and cold air has less capacity to carry moisture. At some point, the water vapour in the air condenses into water droplets which, if they remain small enough only form fog or clouds; when they grow larger, they fall as raindrops.

We were not far away from our destination, actually much closer than we appreciated. It only took about 45 minutes to reach Lundörrspasset and the emergency cottage there.

The cottage is there for those who need it in a case of emergency. There is a fireplace, firewood, an emergency telephone, an axe and a spade. This does not mean that others cannot be there. It is open for anyone who wants to rest for a while, have a snack and dry one’s clothes if they are wet. (Ours were.) The rule is that nobody is allowed to use the firewood and/or sleep overnight unless there is an emergency.

We stayed there to eat lunch, recover a bit, and, more importantly, decide what to do next. We had reached our goal for the trip already on the third day, so we had about four days to get back and do other stuff. 

We decided take the same way back to Vålådalen, where we started, and make shorter, daily walks back and forth from there.

The mist was lightening in the direction we had come from, so it seemed we had a nice, sunny walk back to look forward to.

But the weather deceived us, luring us out before showering us with drizzle. We could still see the end of the mist in the distance, and, hoping to outrun the rain, we marched speedily all the way back to the stream crossing. Unfortunately, we never got away from the rain, which soaked us completely – despite our waterproofs. And the fog made the valley more ominous than before.

Standing by the stream crossing once again, this time wet and cold, we were desperate to cross quickly. Therefore, when we found a different way across, where the stream was more shallow, we took it without thinking much, more relieved to have found a better route.

However, that crossing did not go to the other bank; it only went to a small patch land in the middle of the stream, and there was no good way from there to the other streambank. We were forced to go back and make it the way we did the day before, only having lost time and getting more desperate to come across.

To make matters worse – far, far worse – I slipped and fell half-way across, dropping both my boots into the stream with the opening facing the current. I managed to catch the boots just in time before the stream carried them away (phe-ew!), but they got filled with water inside. Moreover, when I fell, I did so on my backpack – so it got wet too – and dropped the tent I was carrying with my left arm – so it got wet too. The bottom end of my trouser legs got utterly soaked because I didn’t pull them up properly. In short, I got wetter than wet. 

I was on the brink of panicking now. If I could not get dry and warm tonight, I might go into hypothermia. In hindsight, I might have been a bit paranoid there – the air was not very cold, so if it only stopped raining we could try to make a fire (if we were lucky to find dry wood) and the boots and clothes could be dried. Still, the danger should not be underestimated, and I was in no good position to take risks. Therefore, when we reached Lundörrstugorna, I had to rent a room for the night. The others were camping some twenty minutes down the road, so they would come and pick me up the next morning.

There was no light in this place, nor tap water. Luckily, they did have a warm room for drying clothes and plenty of paper to put into the wet shoes, sucking out the moisture inside – all you needed to do was to remember to change the papers every once in a while. As soon as I had washed away the worst of the mud of my trousers (by the lake, using a bucket to pour water on them) and put my wet stuff to dry, I could make late dinner (the time was around 10 pm) with their gas stove, using my headlamp to see what I was doing.

The other people that were staying there were rather friendly and open. Having been there for ten minutes, only focusing on drying my things, the story had spread to everyone and they all knew I was the guy that got wet. Unfortunately, by the time I was done with the essentials, everyone was sleeping, so I did not get a good chance to a proper talk with anyone.

The rooms were heated, and they provided beds with mattresses and pillows, but no covering, so I slept with my sleeping bag open on top of me. The real luxury was to be able to bend my legs to make it more comfortable for my knees, which were aching tremendously from a whole day of strenuous marching.

The next morning, the sun was shining strongly. Tim came to pick me up, while the others remained at their camp, drying the last of their stuff. We walked to the camp, where we all stayed for quite some time, just enjoying the sun and recovering from yesterday’s hellish experience.

The camp was by a still lake with a glorious view over the mountain by Lundörrstugorna.

We made it back to our first camp surprisingly fast. There we stayed to have lunch before we marched the rest of the way to Vålådalen. The weather was fabulous the whole time – a total contrast to the previous day. Still, the walk did suck out the last of my energy, so when we finally came to Vålådalen, we all crashed down around a table in the common room, only being bothered to take off our shoes, sitting sluggishly for a long while before we mobilised enough energy to play cards. 

However, at dinner time, we faced a new menace: black flies, or knott in Swedish. The English name is quite misleading, because they can be distinguished from flies by their clearly white wings. They are small buggers – small enough to easily get through the holes in the anti-mosquito face net – and seem not to be much affected by anti-mosquito spray (the substance you spray on your skin or clothes to repel mosquitos). Their bites hurt more than that of a mosquito, although the mark they leave is only a tiny, red dot that hardly itches unless you touch it.

However, the main thing that made the black flies so excruciatingly insufferable was that there were thousands of them!

All of us had about as many on our backs, slightly less on our faces, and many more swarming around us as we tried to cook dinner. The only thing to do was to walk around while waiting for the water to boil, and suffer the pain when it was necessary. When we were eating, walking around and about in random patterns, the people that lived there looked at us as if we were crazy.

We camped for the night on a field nearby. The black flies followed us all the way…

It was raining when we woke up the next morning. We tried to wait it out, but it did not seem to lighten. So, we had to get out and pack our tents in pouring rain and hurry back inside to the cottage. It was raining so hard it would have been tricky to cook porridge for breakfast, and, since I had nothing else, I had to buy snacks in the small store. It was not a healthy breakfast, but at least I had something. For the next time, I will think about not bringing only breakfast that needs to be cooked – if this had happened in the middle of nowhere, I would have had to eat the oat grains as they were.

Inside the cottage, we tried to decide what to do next. The meteorology reports said that the rain would cease around lunch, and that the rest of the day would be lovely, but how often are those reports right? Still, we could not be in there all day.

After some back and forth arguments, we agreed to go to Östtoppen, the highest point in Vålådalen, about 1200 metres above sea level. We would make camp for the night at the top, because Tim promised a phenomenal view in the early morning.

The route is short, but steep. During the initial stages of the ascent, the top was covered in mist.

On the way, we came to a waterfall.

There, I found plenty of rocks with familiar features.

Actually, there were two types of these weird structures: some form elongated protrusions, others form long furrows.

The former I know from before – know that I cannot tell how they formed – and the latter are probably regular glacial striations, and, logically, should be newer. The furrows do seem to cut through the protruding structures.

By now, we were high enough to see the Lundörrspasset clearly behind us.

After another half hour of ascent, we found a nice spot to have lunch.

Up here, I had the by far best freeze-dried meal in the entire trip: chicken in sweet-sour sauce.

The brand is called Mountain House, and they seem to have really good freeze-dried food – except for the dishes with mince! The other two dishes I had – the sweet-sour chicken stew and a creamy soup of potato and salmon – were truly superb. But, be warned about their minced meat meals!

One funny thing I saw when having lunch was a place just below us and a bit away where you could clearly see the three different stages in the forming of meltwater bodies on hillsides.

To the right, there is a heap of snow, in the middle a pool of water fed by melting snow, and to the very left a snow-free pond.

Here is a close-up of the middle puddle.

Knowing that there would not be any water available on the top of the mountain, when we heard running water, we deviated from the path and went to search for the stream. Daniel stayed on the trail, guarding our backpacks and making sure we would not lose the trail. Having filled our water stock, we were now up for what felt like hours and hours of walking up through steep paths. When we were close to the top, the incline was insane, and we had to stop for rest between just minutes of walking.

But all that was instantly forgotten when Tim and Pawel stopped suddenly. Daniel and I were far behind, but as soon as we caught up, they signalled at us to be quiet and that I should take out my camera.

And then I saw it: over the top of a minor hill, perhaps ten metres away from us, a pair of huge antlers were sticking out.

My heart stopped.

Before I had recovered from the initial shock, the creature was gone. But they sent me forward with the camera to take some pictures. Still afraid, not knowing whether I might provoke the animals – I mean, only grazers have antlers, so they were not predators, but who knows if they have young they might consider us a threat to – I carefully walked across the hill.

And there they were:

Two deer – a male and a female – at a safe distance of about twenty metres. Phew. In hindsight, I cannot tell if my relief or pure fascination dominated at that moment, but it sure was great to see such magnificent beasts in real life.

They also seemed curious, staring back at me as they did – more cautiously curious than afraid. Somewhere in the back of my head, I remembered a poster about deer handling and raising in these areas. Also, the deer were bound to have stumbled upon hikers ascending this mountain before us. They did not seem unaccustomed to humans.

The place was full of scattered heaps of their dung, so it appeared as they visited this mountain top on a regular basis. Now they were gone, however; they would keep a distance to us. I would not mind to be able to get close to them, but it felt safer to know that there was mutual respect. We walked on; the peak was near.

Then we saw the rest of the herd.

They were not very far away, and kept staring at us warily. Now, it felt as if neither party knew what to do. This was clearly their territory, and now they overwhelmed us in size and numbers. I cannot deny the fear came back to me.

But, as usually, I was just being silly: after a long gaze, the grazers moved on. They went downhill, probably to other grazing grounds.

When that awesome encounter was over, we only had to walk for a minute or so until we reached the highest peak in Vålådalen. It is (apparently) mountain-climbing custom to pick up a rock and add it to a pile on the top point.

It was (excuse my language) shit cold up there, and not just due to the occasional winds. In the back of my head, I was worried about the night, given that I had been freezing every time before: this would be ten times worse. However, I was more excited as the cold forced me to keep moving around, and that meant an excellent excuse to wander off a little to explore the place. (Of course, I could not go very far in any direction due to the mist, but at least the summit plain was small enough that I could not get lost unless I tried hard to. Also, the by far most fantastic thing about the cold was that there was not a single mosquito or black fly in sight!!!! Those tiny bugs cannot cope with the cold, and with the scarcity of prey at these altitudes, it is just not worth it for them to endure such places. Finally, we had found our sanctuary from the blood-sucking insects, and could enjoy the rejuvenating freshness of outdoors.

We were lucky we had come up from the direction we came: the other side of the peak was insanely steep: there was a thirty metres high near-vertical rock wall leading down to the next platform.

The mist prevented clear view of the surroundings, except for what we could catch glimpses of through holes in the fog.

But as you see, even those tastes were marvellous. I could not wait for the morning, where the sight would be even better.

Exploring around, I discovered plenty of stuff. The deer were not completely gone; some of them still roamed around us.

Not surprisingly, I found plenty of deer tracks.

That first track picture might be confusing, as it looks like the animal has a three-toed hoof, but notice that the rightmost impression is more narrow and teardrop-shaped, the upper end tapering curvedly into a pointy tip, while the others broaden again from mid-length toward the front end: these were made by two different individuals, probably one male and one female; the left toe print of the one with the more narrow hoof was replaced by the right hoof toe print of the one with the broader toes.

The tracks in the second picture also look markedly different from those in the first photo: they are more reminiscent of horseshoe marks. But, notice that that shape is created by the water filling the track up to the top of the depression ridge. If you look more carefully, you can see the more hoof-like impressions in the mud at the bottom of the tiny pools of water.

We also found plenty of human remains: a plastic cup; a torn, brown child shirt; human hand prints in the mud.

Someone had stumbled and halted his/her fall to the ground with his left hand. Added to the other things we found, there might have been a dramatic, bloody battle up here, long ago – a family with small children attacked and slaughtered or chased away by some foul beasts among the mountains.

Who would sleep well tonight?

We set up our camp on a suitable spot, and had plenty of dinner so we would have enough energy for our bodies to generate enough heat throughout the night.

Before going to bed, I took a last patrol around the summit, and had this view bestowed upon me:

Preparing for the cold night, we took all available blankets, clothes and towels and covered our sleeping bags with them. It is much better to put that on top of the sleeping bag, instead of inside it, as one might think. If you have the cloth inside, precious head will go to warming up the cloth, instead of your body; on the other hand, if you stock it on your sleeping bag, it will work as an insulating layer, preventing some heat from escaping the bag, thus preserving more warmth within the sleeping bag.

The trick worked excellently: I froze significantly less this night than any other during this trip!

A brief rain drizzle woke us up the next morning. But, it was even cloudier now than last night.

One could tell the sun was shining outside the clouds that enveloped the mountain top. This was hugely disappointing, since we had imagined a mesmerizing view to greet us. Instead, we were back to the mist and chilly winds.

After preparing and eating breakfast, however, the clouds began to scatter, and here and there you could get decent glimpses of the sunlit ground down below. From there, the sky gradually became clearer. After a while, our patience finally paid off.

And we were revisited by the deer. At first, there were only single individuals roaming around below.

But, soon enough they came in a group even larger than yesterday!

They were much less shy today: they went past us at a distance of less than ten metres! (They did so with speed and did not stop anywhere near us, but at least they were not so skittish as to take the long walk around the summit.) At such proximity, the stature and power of those animals were ever so impressive. Lamentably, I did not have my camera out then, and I was too enthralled to think about taking it out, not until it was too late. The best shot I got was this:

Ominously dark clouds gathered in the sky, so we had to leave soon or make the descent on slippery rocks and soggy mud. This was farewell to the magnificent deer, and I would say that my last picture captures our mood when we parted pretty well.

Our hurry was in vain, though: the bad weather was upon us almost instantly, and it rained alternately lighter and harder all the way down to the waterfall, by which there was a built shelter. Typically, the pouring rain ceased just about when we reached the shelter. It’s always like that…

The rest of the journey back to Vålådalen we made under a radiant sun, and the weather stayed good the rest of the day, so we cannot really complain. It was just annoying that the rain had come precisely during the hardest time.

We had one night left out here, so it was perfect to make a short walk (on asphalt! flat ground!! you can imagine how weird that felt after six days of marching through rocky mud and marshland) to Nulltjärnen, a cold glacial lake with stunning natural splendour – especially when the day is turning to night.

The plan was to have dinner and then take a short swim in the potentially ice-cool lake before going to bed. We struggled long and hard to make a fire to warm us by after the dip, the rain having soaked all wood. I was not of much help in finding firewood, much because I know very little about fires, but also because I was more entranced with the odd tilt of the trees.

This was not the characteristic curved slant that usually results from creeping (cf. Quaternary geology in Uppland) (cf. is a useful formal abbreviation much like e.g. [“for example”] and i.e. [“that is”], basically meaning “compare with”). The tree trunks are not curved, just sloping. The only explanation I can think of is that strong and continuous winds blowing in from the lake have mildly influenced the growth of the trees, gently tilting the crowns away.

However, from what I know of meteorology, I would say that the dominant wind direction should be from land out toward the cold lake, not the other way around. This is a tricky one…

As we fought for the fire, the sun was setting, creating a spellbinding horizon.

It was already dark when we had raised our tents and were ready to jump into the water. What you must understand is that swimming in a lake is very different from bathing at sea. The sea is warm – normally above 25 °C (in my experience from the Caribbean and Mediterranean seas, at least), while the typical temperature in a lake in Sweden during a warm summer day is around 20 °C, which means that you need to be in the water for at least a couple of minutes before you are accustomed enough for it to feel comfortable. (This is actually great, because bathing in a lake actually cools you down on hot days; the sea usually only makes you sweat even worse afterwards.) Nulltjärnen, however, freezes in winter, so it has only had a couple of months to warm up after having melted. That water cannot have been warmer than 10 °C!

I think you can pretty much imagine what it was like. Tim and Pawel plunged in, and then almost instantly rushed back to shore. I made a slow, steady approach, taking the shock in smaller doses. (Daniel went straight to bed…) Waist-deep, I was cold enough to imagine what it would feel like to go all the way, so I stopped there. Unfortunately (perhaps?), Tim and Pawel came running back and said they would splash all over me if I did not submerge in five seconds. When they had counted to three, my survival instincts told me they were serious about it, so without thinking too much, I dropped down to the cold abyss. But it was not really so bad. It is always worse when you imagine it.

Still, we had had enough now. It was time to get dry and warm for the final night in the fell. Sitting by the fire in the dark, we all had mixed feelings. It would be really good to come home, get clean, rest, relax and recover; on the other hand, these last days had been really great, so it felt sad that it was all over soon. Sunken deeply into thoughts, the infernal mosquitos and black flies were hardly a nuisance any more.

The next morning was all about Tim having lost a sock. Yep, all troubles of previous days were as good as gone by now.

As I have mentioned in an earlier post (well… that one was early because this one is so late), one of the things that kept me going was the promise of a pastry feast during the train journey home. Unfortunately, the store only had one danish (which I dropped on the floor, but I damn had to eat it anyway!) and some doughnuts. This was scandalous; I felt so betrayed I could hardly enjoy the little pastry I had – which is unusual, since one would normally find anything extraordinarily delicious after a week of bleak porridge, freeze-dried food and macaroni with powder soup sauce.  

Still, it mattered little. I guess I was too tired and eager to come home that I could forget about the disappointment.

I just want to show a last picture, taken by Pawel on the train. Indeed, we all had mixed feelings, and the diverse facial expressions here kind of make a pun of that expression. (I like puns.)

Don't forget to watch the slideshow I made about this trip! Here is the link again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxfIBqfIqeA