Stensdalen to Vålådalen, 14 km.

I slept unusually well this night. Usually I go to bed early when I’m hiking because I’m tired in the evening and there’s nothing much to do in the hut, and then I wake at six. Today I slept all the way until seven.

As I stepped onto the terrace outside the Stensdalen hut in the morning, I noticed that a mountain had disappeared. Yesterday evening there was a mountain there. This morning the mountain was gone from view, hidden in a thick layer of mist. (This is the same view as in the last photo in yesterday’s post.)

Some of the hikers were grumbling about the mist and how there wouldn’t be any views from the trail today. Apparently the first half of the trail from here to Vålådalen, which is what I’ll be walking today, is supposed to have the most beautiful views in this area. Personally I’m just happy to not get rained upon all day! A bit of mist is fine with me. It isn’t even windy today.

I realized this morning that I never took a photo of the Tvärån yesterday at the spot where I couldn’t cross it. I was too busy not crossing it. As luck would have it, I crossed another river this morning that was very similar in size and character and overall feel. This one had a solid steel bridge across it. It rather makes sense when you look at that river, doesn’t it? This is not a river that makes you think that a bridge would be an unnecessary luxury and people can just wade across.


The weather was wet and cold and the morning mist hung around for along time. I could guess where those ordinarily beautiful views might be, but the visibility was really limited. But this was a very beautiful walk, despite and also because of the mist. Everything was muffled and quiet.


Here’s me enjoying a midmorning cup of hot blackcurrant cordial and a view of the mist, which was just beginning to lift at around this time, eleven o’clock or thereabouts. If you’re wondering why it looks like I’m walking without a rucksack, it’s because the rucksack was acting as camera support for this self-portrait.


Once the mist disappeared, the air was very crisp and clear and I could finally get some macro photos. The other days weren’t macro-friendly at all, with all the rain and wind.

This is bog blueberry or bog bilberry (odon) which is a common shrub in the mountains hereabouts. Bog bilberry is what gives the alpine heaths much of their soft red colour. Dwarf birch is more of a fiery orange-red while alpine bearberry (ripbär) adds purplish-red accents here and there.

The path today went steadily downhill. Around midday the open heaths and alpine birch forest ended and I was in spruce forest.

The paths were very muddy and wet nearly everywhere and there were wide boggy patches to either splash through, or to cross by hopping from tussock to tussock. The plank paths were again in very bad shape and missing entirely in places that really needed them.

As I walked further, I started recognizing familiar places – I was reaching parts of the trail that I’ve walked on my previous trips here but in the other direction. I was also nearing civilization and seeing more people on the trail than during the past few days.

I didn’t miss civilization at all yet. Since I had a margin of several hours before the bus would leave and only two more kilometres to walk, I stopped for a long lunch break next to a beautiful lake. It wasn’t exactly warm but at least not freezing cold. And there was still no rain!


Vålåstugan to Stensdalen. 18.5 km due to long detours.

The night was incredibly windy. Air vents in all rooms rattled constantly, and the trek to the loo was a struggle, not to mention the longer trek to fetch water.

The weather report promised that the wind would slacken in the morning but this never happened. The gusts were strong enough to nearly blow me off my feet; at times I was literally blown several steps off course and had to plant my pole to stay standing.

Speaking of poles, one of my walking poles stopped working. I couldn’t fix it in the extended position – it just kept collapsing. Forced to walk with a single pole, I realized that I liked this even better. With one pole I still get the balance and support, but at the same time I always have one hand free for the camera or a hankie or a snack. So I’m not going to buy a new pair of poles as I had initially planned – I’ll just keep walking with the one pole that still works.

The weather report also promised that there wouldn’t be any rain. That may have been technically correct; maybe it was just the cloud that was hanging all the way to the ground. In any case I could see sheets of wetness blowing through the air. The air was saturated with water and so was I.


The first half of this walk crosses the same empty plateau that I’ve usually walked across during the afternoon of my first day, but in the other direction. The trail then descends to below the tree line and continues through alpine birch forest.

About halfway there is a river, the Tvärån, to cross. When I got to the river I was immediately taken aback by its size and strength. This did not look like a river to wade through. The water looked deep and was flowing very fast, and there river bottom looked very uneven. I walked upstream along the river for a good while, looking for a better place, but wherever I thought I saw a promising spot, it turned out to be just as bad as all the other places when I got closer. So I gave up searching and went back to the original spot.

A couple of other hikers had just crossed the river there and pointed out the spot where they had crossed. Since I have very limited experience of fording rivers, I guessed that maybe they knew more about this, and maybe it wasn’t as bad as it looked. So I set out to do wade across in the same place.

I was barely a few steps into the water when I realized that this was not a good idea. The water was up to my hips and the flow of it was very, very strong. Were I to lift just one of my feet to take a step forward, I would simply be pushed off my feet. I have no idea how those other ladies managed to do this, and how they could have thought that this made sense! Once you lose your balance even the slightest bit, when the flow of water is so strong there is no way of regaining your balance. You’ll be off your feet, tumbling down the river between those rocks until they stop you. You can of course slip and fall in shallower water as well, but then at least you’ll be able to keep your head above the water, regardless of which way you fall. Whereas in hip deep water, you’ll be lucky to get a breath at all while you’re tumbling downstream.

Anyway, I turned around and was luckily able to make it back to the shore without falling.

I think I had probably spent about an hour at this river by now, and gotten nowhere. Just as I was feeling rather lost, more hikers caught up with me, and then even more. One of them shared information they had heard earlier from hikers going in the other direction, who had forded the river much further upstream. Based on their description (“small islands in the river”) and our maps, we figured out where that spot was, and then we set out walking upstream again. If nothing else, we agreed, the river would get smaller – based on the maps it seemed to become a stream a few kilometres up.

Nearly two kilometres from where the path met the river, we found the ford that the others had described, and it was clearly a much better place for crossing. The water was still strong and fast but the riverbed was much wider and more even. As a result the water barely reached my knees. Wading still took concentration, but never actually felt like a risky enterprise.

From this point there was first some more trackless walking to get back downstream to where the path was. This was fun: instead of just following the path, I had to think about where I should be walking, both on a large scale (which direction) and a small one (where to actually put my feet). After all, if I was off the path anyway, there was no point in walking back straight along the river when I could instead cut straight across the heath and rejoin the path further along. I even took out my map and compass, which I haven’t otherwise needed and only had with me “just in case”.

The path then went steadily downhill through a birch forest. When I neared the hut, there was another wide river to ford, but here the path met the river at a suitable place and I had no trouble getting across.

The one and only river I had forded before today (which I did two years ago) was so small that I went across barefoot. Here the river was so much wider that I thought that might be unwise, so I waded in my boots, which then naturally got completely waterlogged. The wet socks and boots still kept my feet quite warm, but were somewhat uncomfortable. For next year, I’ll have to buy some kind of extra shoes for wading. I’ve seen some people wade in Crocs, and others have lightweight running shoes.

The weather never got any better and I never stopped for an actual lunch, so by the time I got to the hut I was cold and starving again. I finally got my lunch at half past three.

The Stensdalen hut boasts beautiful views and is quite modern and comfortable. (The old hut here burned down and was replaced, so this one is barely ten years old.) The rooms are large and light and airy compared to the older huts, and the kitchen is very spacious. There’s even lighting, with electricity supplied by solar cells. It’s convenient, but it lacks the cozy charm of the older huts, so I didn’t really feel at home here.


Continuing from Lunndörren to Vålåstugan, 16 km. Beautiful colors everywhere.

There were patches of sparse birch forest here and there but otherwise today’s walk went mostly over bog and open heath. This area is also criss-crossed by a lot of rivers and streams: I counted four actual bridges, one fallen tree, and plenty of small footbridges.

There was a lot of bog to cross, and the plank paths across the bogs were in disgracefully bad shape. Missing planks, broken planks, saggy planks… In the worst places the planks just served as an easy channel for the bog water, so the path became a stream and I was walking through water deep enough to cover the foot of my boots. It was better than no path at all, because at least my feet were not sinking into the mud. But my feet were already quite wet before I had even come halfway.

The weather today was wet and cold – above freezing, but not by much. A light rain fell through the entire day. Around midday the wind started picking up and by the afternoon the gusts were around 20 m/s. Wise from last year’s snowy weather, I had brought my wooly winter hat and thick mittens and was very glad to have them. My waterproof layers did their job so apart from my feet I was mostly dry, but the constant cold wind was chilling. I wasn’t actually cold at any point because I kept moving (and had I been wearing any more layers I would have been sweating) but I could feel my body heat leaking away.

I stopped for a very brief snack break behind the same lone rock as last year. It is so conveniently situated right at the halfway point between these two huts, and it is literally the only thing I saw all day that is large enough to offer shelter from the wind. With its little overhang it even protected me from the rain (which was falling diagonally because of the wind). But it was still far from pleasant there so I kept my break short – just a flapjack and some hot drink – and kept on walking instead. Better to get to the hut sooner and get a proper meal there.

Towards the end of today’s walk I thought several times that I recognized the place and was nearly there, but behind each softly undulating hill there was another, very similar one. By the end I was running low on blood sugar and I was quite happy to arrive at the hut. The first thing I did was to hang up all my wet things to dry; the second thing was to finally eat lunch.

Today’s wildlife: a small group of reindeer, large flocks of what may have been common redpolls, and a beautiful bird that I guess must have been a Siberian jay. In the photos that Google finds for me, the Siberian jay looks grayish brown, but the one I saw had shades of green in its plumage, almost iridescent when the light hit it right. Wikipedia has an old picture of Siberian jays where the birds look a lot more like the impression I got, though, so I guess that’s what it must have been.


Vålådalen to Lunndörren, 12.5 km.

For the third year in a row I’m doing a four-day autumn hike in Jämtland, starting from Vålådalen.

I’ve been here twice already. It’s not like Sweden doesn’t have any other scenic places where I could hike, so I spent quite a bit of time looking for alternatives this year. But if I want a hut-to-hut hike (which I do) that is about four or five days long (which is what I can get from work) and is reachable by train and bus (which is also important to me) then there is not a lot to choose from. And this is a very beautiful national park, and it’s not like I’m tired of it yet, so I’m perfectly fine with coming here again.

I did change around my route though. The past two years I’ve tried to get as far into the high mountains as quickly as possible, which meant walking from Vålådalen to Vålåstugan on the first day. That’s a lot of walking with a lot of uphill, which is rather heavy for the first day, when my legs are not yet used to walking and my pack is heavy.

This time I went for a shorter option for the first day and walked from Vålådalen to Lunndörren instead. This walk is also nearly all uphill, but so is every other option from here. This was the final bit of last year’s hike but now I’m doing it in reverse.

Most of this walk went through alpine forest of spruce and alpine birch, with occasional more open areas of bog and small lakes.

The weather was very changeable and unsettled, like the epitome of mountain weather. One moment the sky was mostly blue and literally a few minutes later it was overcast and snowing. The clouds didn’t so much arrive as appear out of thin air, as some mass of air met some other mass of air and hey presto, precipitation. At times I think there was snow coming out of nowhere, from a clear sky.

There were short moments of dry weather but those passed quickly. Most of the time, some kind of cold water was falling from the sky. There was rain and there was snow and sleet and hail, and combinations of those.

I sat down for a lunch break at one point when I thought the dry weather might hold for more than a few minutes, but it didn’t, and I ate the rest of my boiled egg while walking.

The forest here is quiet, without much birdsong or other sounds. I did scare a bunch of grouse into flight and was surprised by how noisy they were.


The Lunndörren hut is a lovely, cosy hut in an incredibly scenic location, right next to a lake with mountain views across it. The sauna is literally a few steps away from a bathing spot. (Which I didn’t try out, because much of the point of going to a sauna in this weather is to get warm, and bathing in an ice cold lake doesn’t really help with that.)


Lunndörren to Vålådalen, 12 km. Today was a short day because I had a bus to catch in the afternoon.

Heading north, mostly through forest and across small bogs. Steadily downhill all the day, which made for an easy walk. Quite soon I left winter behind me and was back in an autumn forest. Pleasant but quite unexciting after the past few days’ dramatic experiences.

Near the end of my hike, where the trail crosses Vålå river, I got to try an experimental ropeway. Normal bridges are expensive to build and risk getting damaged or swept away by ice and high waters. A ropeway hangs higher up and is therefore less likely to be caught in a flood.

It worked well enough but dragging me and my pack and the “basket” across was hard work and took about ten times longer than walking across. Given a choice between this and a normal bridge, I’d rather walk, but if the choice is between this and wading then I’ll take the ropeway.

Ropeway on the left, bridge on the right:


Day trip from Lunndörren to Pyramiderna / Issjön / Grönvallen, 18 km.

The snow caught up with me here today.

I wasn’t planning to be here and didn’t really have a plan for the day. I need to be back at Vålådalen by the end of tomorrow, and there are no huts within reach of a day’s hike of here and Vålådalen. So I did a day trip. The hut host had some day trip proposals and I picked one that did not involve going higher up.

Issjödalen was supposed to be this beautiful valley, the highlight of this route. I saw nearly nothing of it since I had the wind in my face and was keeping my head down and just plodding along. Quite definitely the least enjoyable part of today, and of this entire hike. I was glad when it was over. This is my only photo from this section of the hike and the only way to get it was to turn around and face backwards, away from the wind.

As long as I wasn’t in a wind tunnel, the hiking was good. It was still windy, of course – the photos look quiet but reality was anything but. My clothes were flapping and the wind was whining around my hood all the time.

Today was not at all what I had in mind, but definitely memorable. There is something about hiking in challenging weather conditions that appeals to me in a way I cannot really explain.

The day felt almost unreal. Emptiness and snow all around me; the paths all hidden by snow and no people or even footprints to be seen. I could almost pretend that I was alone in the world.

The world consisted of three colours: white, gray, and the gold of birch leaves.


Vålåstugorna to Lunndörren, 16 km.

This is what I woke up to this morning. Snow everywhere. And although you can’t see it in the photo, there is more snow coming, and it is accompanied by a fierce wind. Knud is apparently staying here a bit longer.

The hut host came in with the weather report: continuing storm winds from the west and more snow all day. My planned route would take me straight west, heading straight into the teeth of that wind, plodding through deepening snow. At best this would be a very unpleasant hike; at worst it could be deadly since I have no winter safety gear with me.

Nope. I’m not going to fight this weather. If the wind is from the west, then I’ll head east, and my plans can go… wherever abandoned plans go. Not only will I have the wind at my back this way, I’ll also be heading down rather than up and get some shelter from the forest.

Whenever I got out of the forest, though, the full force of the wind hit me again. But I had it at my back so it mostly didn’t bother me, as long as I kept moving. (Glad I packed my warm gloves and buff and fleece hat.) It snowed much of the time but I was just below the snow line and heading even further down as time passed, so the path remained clear and easy to walk.

Stopping wasn’t pleasant. My lunch break was brief and took place when I came across the one and only rock along this day’s route that was large enough for me to crouch behind. I wasn’t the first one to crouch there; the moss on the ground on the eastern side of the rock had been worn down by many hikers.


This side of the park is criss-crossed by rivers. The bigger ones have bridges. The smaller one I first thought I’d have to wade across, but then I found an almost-bridge of fallen trees so I crossed with dry feet after all.


I arrived at the hut at Lunndörren with plenty of daylight to spare. The hut was beautifully situated on the shore of a little lake. Once I’d gotten warm and had a meal, and spotted a break in the snow, I took a photo walk around the lake.


Day 1 of a four-day circular hike in Jämtland. I’m starting out from Vålådalen like last year, heading to Vålåstugorna and then to Gåsen, Stensdalen and finally back to Vålådalen. Half of my route overlaps with last year’s, but then instead of heading further west after Gåsen I’ll turn back north and stick to the quieter eastern part of the national park, away from the “Jämtland triangle”.

The weather forecast for today promised storm-strength winds from the west, from Knud the Norwegian storm. At Vålådalen there were no signs of the storm; cloudy and just a bit windier than most days, maybe.

The autumn colours are really at their peak this time. Just two weeks later than last year, and what a difference it makes!


When the trail left the forest and got up onto the plateau, Knud was waiting for me. The wind was so hard that I was nearly blown off my feet at times. Mostly I could see the worst gusts coming and braced in time, but at one point I turned towards the east to take a photo and the wind hit me from behind with no warning and actually blew me off balance. For my next photo I hooked my arm around a signpost to stay upright.


There’s no real shelter to be found up on that plateau. My breaks were brief, huddled in the lee of some little hump of grass. Guess I won’t be taking any macro photos this year.

But in the photos it all looks quiet and peaceful.




Sylarna to Storulvån.

Today’s hike overlaps with one leg of the Jämtland triangle, the most marketed and publicised part of the network of hiking trails in Jämtland. I was so disappointed – and so glad that I had been walking elsewhere the other days. Had I only seen the triangle, I would have gone home wondering what the big deal was, why would anyone want to go hiking here?

It barely felt like being in the mountains. In part I guess I was spoilt by the magnificent views of the last two days. Here the landscape was bland in comparison – less hilly, less varied, less colourful, less wild. But in part the trail was simply destroyed by the sheer amount of people there.

It wasn’t so much due to the number of people I actually met on the trail. They were many – around eighty, which is about ten times as many I saw on any of the other days! – but not so many that I was constantly surrounded by people. But the near-constant presence of hundreds of people on the trail had worn it down until I was walking not on a path but a wide rocky field of mud.

Alpine flora is tough in a way, but it cannot survive being trampled by thousands and thousands of feet. Because of this, information boards remind hikers to stay on the trail, but I only saw one or two such signs at the mountain stations, so most hikers probably never noticed them. They see the muddy, rocky trail and it is no fun to walk on – and it really isn’t – so they decide to walk just a little to the side. And the next person does the same, and the next hundred do the same, and the ground “just a little to the side” becomes a part of the muddy, rocky field. Even worse: biking was allowed on these trails. I don’t understand how anyone can think this is a good idea. Wherever the bikers decided to leave the path (and I can understand their decision, biking over rocks the size of half my head seems nearly impossible) they left destruction behind them. In some areas the path had multiplied into five or six paths; in others it was literally a single 6-metre-wide “path”. Almost worse than walking on a road, except for the lack of cars.

So today was almost zero nature experience, just plenty of exercise in fresh air. Which isn’t a bad way to spend a day. It was all downhill as well, so (with my poles to help me) my pace was about twice as fast as the previous days. For the record, I normally reckon with 3 km/h (including all breaks) when I hike the Sörmlandsleden trail. Here my pace was under 2.5 km/h on average, except for today. Today I ended up taking a long lunch break shortly before the end of the hike, because otherwise I don’t know what I’d have done with the rest of this day.

But – there was nothing photo-worthy to this hike. So instead I’m cheating a bit and posting a selection of macro photos from the past three days.

What I learned from this hike:
(The scrum master/software developer in me cannot “close” a project without holding a retrospective.)

  • 20 km is the maximum for a day in mountainous terrain, and 2.5 km/h is reasonable to plan around.
  • Avoid any trail that seems really popular.
  • Keep the pack at 15 kg or less.
  • Start each day’s hike early in the morning. If there is a large group staying in the same hut, and they might be going in the same direction as me, make particularly sure to leave a good while before them.


It’s easy to say that I should aim for a lighter pack, but not so easy to achieve… There wasn’t much in my pack that I could have done without, or would have wanted to be without. Each extra that I start considering comes with a “but”.

The one thing I might leave behind next time is the water bottle. I don’t get very thirsty when I hike, except on the very hottest days, and I could have managed easily with just the thermos flask.

The heaviest extra was my big camera. But even though it’s heavy, I would still pack it again if I were to re-do this trip. The macro photography took this trip to another level for me – it makes me stop and see things that I otherwise wouldn’t even notice. However next time I will only bring the macro lens, leave the “normal” lens at home and only use my compact camera for any non-macro shots. Or perhaps look for lighter-weight macro kit.

The snacks and dinner extras were heavy. The snacks lasted me almost exactly to the end of my trip, so the quantity was not excessive in any way. Maybe I could have brought less and bought more in the huts every day, but the range of goods they had in stock this close to the end of the season was very variable, and I’m not sure I’d want to rely so much on shopping there. One of the huts had run out of pasta as well as rice; another sold me their last half cup of lentils; none of them had any eggs left.

The spare clothes were an extra. I packed one extra of everything, and never needed the spare trousers or fleece jacket. Which was expected: I packed them just in case. I forded that one river without falling, but one of the ladies I met in the huts had fallen into the water while crossing a river and came out soaked. That could have been me.

A heavy pack feels even heavier if it doesn’t sit well. Which I knew, of course, but noticed extra clearly this time. In fact this may be part of the reason why the pack felt so heavy the first day. I was experimenting with various ways of attaching my big camera to the shoulder straps, on the front of the pack, so I could reach it easily without having to take the pack off my back every time I wanted to take a photo. Day two, I put the camera away because of the rain – and noticed that my pack felt lighter this way. I tried hanging it off one of the straps, or two, further up, lower down – but whichever way I tried, it felt heavier than having it inside the rucksack. So that’s where I ended up having it. It was somewhat inconvenient, so then I didn’t use it for landscape photos, but for macro photos I normally took a bit of a break anyway and put my pack down, so then it made less of a difference.


Gåsen to Sylarna.

Today was a repeat yesterday, in the best of ways. Beautiful and wild. (And just as windy as yesterday, and with clouds so low I was walking through them. I almost ended up skipping lunch because the wind was so strong, but then I finally found one large, lonely boulder in the otherwise open grassland and huddled in its lee.)

A new experience for me today was fording a river. I crossed one yesterday as well, but that one had enough rocks in it that I could get across with a few agile hops, keeping my feet dry. A group of runners came along just as I got to today’s river, and some of them managed to get across by jumping between rocks, with their light packs and long legs. But with my pack, the risk of losing my balance was too great, so I had to wade through a part of it. The water was shallow – up to mid-calf maybe – but ice cold of course. I’m glad I only had to take a few steps in it.

I wonder if the word vad, which means “calf” in Swedish, is related to vada which means “wade”.

I was also very grateful for my walking poles. I hesitated when packing them, but decided to bring them after all, and I’m glad I did. I didn’t use them much on Thursday, but on yesterday’s and today’s rocky, uneven paths they were great to have. Not that it was difficult to walk without them – but with them, I could walk without thinking so much about the actual walking.

Most hikers seem to use poles the same way as when skiing: the arms swing back and forth in the same rhythm as the legs, and the poles help propel you forward. At least on uneven ground, like here, I plant a pole once every two steps, roughly, but in fact I’m not even sure my arms and legs really move in sync. I use the poles less as extra motors and more like feelers or tentacles. They provide extra contact with the ground, so I have two or three points of contact almost all the time, which means I can be somewhat sloppy about where and how my feet land. They allow me to “flow” forward over the ground, if that makes sense.