søndag 25. april 2010

10 days in Sarek

After a two weeks long easter break, we gathered up in Alta to get ready for a 10 days touring/camping trip to Sarek national park in Sweden. We made sure that the cooking stove burned well, that the tent was in order and we prepared food and sweets for 10 days. As normal bread goes bad very quickly, we baked a heavy "touring" bread that holds a lot of energy and doesn't get too dry. We also made "energy bombs", which are very dry from the moment you take them out of the oven, and they end up as a bag uf crums after the first day. But I think this is excelent touring food.

Wednesday night a bus picked up the three classes that were going to Sarek, and we drove the whole night. I slept maybe 2 hours the whole night, so day 1 was a pretty hard one. When the bus drove away, we knew we were not going to see any sivilisation the next 10 days, and that was quite exciting. With the pulks packed, we started out in fairly good weather, but it soon turned to slush and rain making everything wet and the skins to fall of. We walked about 20km the first day, and was very happy to set up camp, eat dinner and fire up the stove inside the tent.

Day 2 was another walking day. The weather was everything from sunny to snow, and we walked another 20km, but it was a nice and efficient day, and we had a great long lunch with a camp fire, before leaving the forrest.

We woke up quite early on day 3 to blue sky and barely no wind. This was a rest day/touring day, and a few of us hiked up Gisuris (about 800 vertical meters) and skied down sweet, soft snow. The rest of the evening was spent in camp, just enjoying the sun.

Day 4: got up at 6am hoping to do some touring in the afternoon, but in was windy and very bad sight, so we just walked the 12km to the next camp.

Day 5 we moved onwards to meet the class "Off piste". While walking, we could only see a few meeters ahead, but once at the camp site, the sky opened up, and we got a change to hike up "Klassikeren". 900 vertical meters in powder :D A great way to end the day.

Day 6 and 7 was spent in the same camp, touring up and down different mountains. Everyone found a lot of great big mountain skiing or steep gullies and we were sad to leave. But we had to moove on. So before lunch on day 8, we started hiking out the valley, and had time for a little skiing in the after noon. I was excited to perfectly manage a wide gully at around 35-40 degrees.

Day 9, most people slept in, but 5 of us got up at 5am, hiked up 1000m, had to turn because of the clouds that came in, and skied down to camp where the others had breakfast. Then we hiked the 20km out of the national park, and spent the last night around the camp fire, and slept under the stars. The next day we anly walked the 200m to the bus, enjoyed a burger in Gallivarre, finally we could take a shover, after 10 days in the same dirty clothes.

Sarek turned out to be an awesome trip. The mountains are spectacular, the skiing is great and we were very lucky with so many days with sunny weather. In fact, the worst thing with the whole trips, was the sun burns we all got :D

On sunny days, the trees at camp are decoreted with drying skins and clothes.


Sweet skiing down Stortoppen (2079m). The highets mountain in Sarek.

Christoffer finally got to do some steep telemark-skiing.


The last part up Stortoppen is very steep. We almost needed ice axes and crampons.


One of the moving days. Walking with a pulk is easy when its flat.