Stockholm Culture Night – cultural events, free of charge, all around town. Concerts, performances, open houses, etc.

Unfortunately when thousands of Stockholmers all decide to attend said events, the result is queues. Lots and lots of very long queues. In barely-above-zero temperatures.

I first went to Stockholm City Hall, but the broad queue there went along at least two sides of the building. It’s a public building, so I figured I could see it at another time.

Instead I took the metro to the Royal Institute of Technology, where the reactor hall – home to Sweden’s first, experimental nuclear reactor – was open to the public. The queue was again enormous, but at least I’d get to see something more unique at the end.

I stood for maybe forty minutes, by which time I estimated I’d gotten no more than a quarter of the way there, and I was freezing. No way I’d take two more hours of that.

Having given up on seeing the reactor hall, I opted for a (hopefully) safe bet and took the metro to Gamla Stan and the German Church for a concert. I got a seat (I believe everybody did), and it was indoors and warm, and I heard some lovely music, so at least there was that.

I had a pizza, which warmed me up yet a bit more, and considered my options. The reactor hall was still my top pick. I could either give it another try, or call it a night.

This time the queue was much thinner (and thus faster) and the end of it was well ahead of the point where I’d dropped out before. It still took over half an hour to get to the entrance, but it felt doable.

The reactor hall was a unique space indeed. It hasn’t housed an actual nuclear reactor since 1982, so now it’s just an odd-shaped cavernous space deep underground. For the past 17 years it’s been used as an events space, which has led to some interesting design choices. Tonight it was all lit up in blue, for example, and there’s an installation of mirrors along one side.

All the walls, floors and ceilings are covered in a grid of one-metre squares, for systematically measuring residual radioactivity after the reactor was shut down. The grid breaks up the otherwise monotonous surfaces and makes the hall look kind of like a magician’s experiment.

In the middle of the floor, there’s an irregularly-shaped concrete pit that used to house the actual reactor. Also all gridded up, of course.

Right next to the pit, there’s an antique Wurlitzer theatre organ, originally from the Skandia cinema. These days it’s hooked up to a computer, and we were treated to a loud and energetic performance.

Unpacking after the ski tour, I came across my hike garbage bag. I always have one with me, both for my own garbage and for whatever trash I find on the way. In more populated places, the second category often outweighs the first one. This time, however, 90% of it was snack wrappers.

Things I already knew, that this trip confirmed:

• Skotte is an ideal snack for winter hikes. Dark chocolate with a chocolate and hazelnut filling – tastes good and is easy to chew in cold weather, unlike anything caramel-based, for example.
• For winter hikes, choose snacks that you can eat while wearing mittens.
• Winter hikes need more snacks than summer hikes. Yes, it’s heavy, but worth the weight. I went through a 100-gram chocolate bars (or equivalent) and a 200-250 gram bag of fruit and/or nuts daily.

Learnings and inspiration from this trip:

• Most people count on everyone drinking tea or coffee. Don’t count on any saft/cordial being available (except in Norway).
• Ice tea powder, while mostly sugar, is a convenient substitute for cordial – lightweight and spill-proof
• Cup of soup is also a decent way to make an instant hot drink. I’ve always thought of instant soup as a meal, but a mostly useless one because it has almost no calories or nutrition. But as a drink it actually becomes useful.
• Speaking of cup of soup: hot water + cup of soup + instant rice makes a decent snack. I didn’t know that instant rice existed.

It feels like the houses are taking forever. I think all I did today was tiny cross-stitch windows. They need to be aligned and more or less equally sized, and they’re small and fiddly. But they’re necessary, to hold down the long stitches of the house facades.

Above-zero temperatures are here to stay, so I declare bicycle season started.

I commuted to Sortera at Liljeholmen by bike for the first time yesterday, following the (to me) most obvious path: Spångavägen to Brommaplan, Drottningholmsvägen to Alvik, then across Tranebergsbron bridge and Västerbron bridge and Liljeholmsbron bridge straight to Liljeholmen.

That’s a lot of bridges. And the bridges in Stockholm generally are quite high above the water, to leave space for boats and what not. Tranebergsbron is a serious hill to climb.

Today I tried a different route, with only two bridges. Google says it’s 800 metres and 2 minutes shorter, and has 10 metres less of ascent. True, but Gröndalsbron bridge is even steeper than the others.

On the minus side, the cycle path shares Gröndalsbron with a ten-lane, heavily trafficked motorway. It’s noisy, windy, and the road surface on the cycle path is in bad shape. On the plus side (beyond the numbers) most of this route feels quieter and has far fewer cyclists, which I rather like. And am glad to avoid the bottlenecks and traffic lights at Alvik and Västerbron. So I kind of like it.

Or maybe it’s just the appeal of something new.

I’m just back from my annual ski trip, with a week of no mobile coverage and hence no blogging. And I was a bit behind even before the trip. Catching up commences now.

Spring arrived in Spånga while I was away. When I left, most everything was still dormant, and I come back to everything flowering.

The overnight transition from a thick blanket of snow in Jokkmokk to spring flowers was jarring.

My trip from Jokkmokk back to Stockholm starts at two in the afternoon. Bus to Murjek, train to Boden, sleeper train to Stockholm.

Which leaves me with half a day to kill in Jokkmokk. There’s a museum here that I had thought I might visit, but they’re closed on Sundays, so that was not an option.

I walked around the Talvatis lake instead. A bit slippery, since I didn’t have proper footwear, but sunny and nice. And saw the old church.

In Murjek I had another hour and a half to wait, so I left all my luggage at the station and went for another walk. Just headed off along the first road that looked like it might not have much traffic, walked for half an hour, and then turned back. My body has gotten all used to moving and gets restless after a day of inactivity.

Såmmarlappa to the old Darreädno shelter, 10-ish km, flat.

Skiing along the Darreädno river towards civilization, leaving Padjelanta behind us. A spring day with dripping eaves and warm but changeable weather.

I realize I haven’t shown or said much about the pulks we were using. Here’s a typical morning scene: those who are done with their individual packing, as well as any cleaning tasks, bring out the pulks from wherever we’ve stacked them for the night and line them up, ready for packing.

Every pulk gets a black crate of shared food (quite empty and lightweight by now) and a big bag for everything else. The bags are not waterproof – their only job is to keep things inside and snow outside, and then be strapped onto the pulks. Inside we have our stuff in dry bags, and perhaps some loose items. I always shove my emergency sleeping mat and my Crocs in loose. The sleeping mat is too large to fit in the dry bag (and doesn’t need it either) and the Crocs are the first things I want when we arrive at a hut (and also don’t need to be kept dry).

Today’s skiing was very flat, along the Darreädno river. The weather was warm and the snow wet and mushy. In places we were skiing through puddles.

We skied until lunchtime and stopped at the old Darreädno shelter – one of the very first ones built by STF, in 1889. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to see whether it was open, or what it looked like inside.

After lunch we were picked up by a pair of snowmobiles and trailers. We packed ourselves and all our kit into the trailers, and were ferried back to civilization.

Driving a snowmobile, with a heavily-loaded double trailer, along a twisty and bumpy trail, occasionally through wet patches and over small bridges, clearly required significant skill and attention from the driver. At one point, where the track did a sharp turn just before crossing a small bridge, we had to get out of the trailer and let the snowmobile basically jump across (with the rear trailer only nominally using the bridge to cross).

The ride went mostly through sparse forest and was quite scenic. This time the trailer had actual cushions and reindeer skins to sit on, and there was no storm in our faces, so it was rather pleasant.

Duottar to Såmmarlappa, 26 km. 75 m ascent, 450 m descent. 8.5 hours.

The day started with nice, easy skiing across gently undulating terrain, under a light cloud cover.

Then the views opened up towards the south-east.

With excellent timing, the clouds also cleared away, and the wind died down, and we had some truly excellent skiing. From this point onwards our route followed a chain of connected lakes, which make for great skiing – flattish ground, views all around. If I recall correctly, some of the views we had here were out over the mountains in Sarek national park, to the east of Padjelanta, and someone probably pointed out which mountain was which. Having nothing to relate those names to, I promptly forgot them, but I did appreciate the views.

Towards the afternoon we had a lovely, gentle, long descent down (and then out) from the Padjelanta national park. The spectacular views of nothing but mountains and rocks and snow were replaced with birch forest. Not as dramatic, but I do like skiing through forests as well.

The weather got gradually warmer and wetter as the afternoon went on. We arrived at Såmmarlappa through thick, wet snow.

Såmmarlappa is a manned hut so we were greeted with pre-warmed rooms and hot blackcurrant cordial.

Staying at Duottar for another night. Today was planned as a slack day, in case we needed to adjust our route or timing due to the weather – or to be used for a day trip. In the end it was a bit of both. The day started out very windy, continuing on from yesterday, so we mostly stayed in the huts until lunchtime.

In the middle of the day we had a couple of fine hours of beautiful sunshine, and went out on a small circuit on the nearby lake. On the other side of the lake we took off our skis and climbed to the top of the (very small) peak to get some views.

It was rather satisfying to get some good glide going. Swish, swoosh, across a flat lake, with the wind at our backs and the sun brilliant above us.

More dark clouds were piling up when we were turning back, and the wind picked up again soon after, so our outing remained short.

The rest of the day we just puttered around our huts. I think many in the group appreciated the rest. There isn’t much space nor comfortable furniture in the huts. You can lounge in your bed, or on one of the small, hard chairs.

I had packed some knitting, given the more generous “luggage allowance” with the pulks. I finished a pair of socks this morning and wound the yarn for the next pair. A ball of sock yarn weighs 100 g, so the two didn’t make my bag much heavier.

At one point we took the time to dig out another stall in the outhouse. When we got here, only one of the stalls was clear of snow. Two others were full of snow inside, and the fourth had a large drift in front of the door. But we were getting low on toilet paper in the one that we were using, so it was worth digging out a second one.

When there’s nothing else to do, there’s almost always water to melt and boil. It’s the first thing we do in the morning, and likewise the first thing we start when we get into a hut in the afternoon. There’s almost always two pots of water on the stove and a bucket of snow next to it.

Had I been on my own, I’d most likely not have bothered with the boiling. Fresh snow, freshly melted, is good enough for me. But I understand that the guides feel like they need to be more responsible with the group’s hygiene.

During this trip I’ve learned that there is technique and tricks to melting snow for drinking water. Sure, you can just shovel snow in a pot and put it on a stove, but there are ways be efficient about it.

Firstly and most importantly, don’t start with snow in an empty pot – you want some water at the bottom. Otherwise the first snow to melt will immediately boil and evaporate, which is a waste. So you prime the pot with the last dregs from your thermos.

Secondly, the first batch of ready, boiled water goes not in the thermos but in ordinary bottles, which you then put in the bucket of snow waiting to be melted next. This way you start warming up the snow while also cooling your drinking water. The thermoses you fill last.

And, of course, don’t leave any of your leftover water in the kettle, like some fool had done, because by the time the next guests get there it will be a solid chunk of ice, spiced with dead flies, which you can’t even pour out because it’s larger than the opening of the kettle.

On any normal trip we’d also spend a fair bit of time cooking. This time we had packed, frozen meals for all dinners, and the guides took care of breakfast porridge. I’ve never eaten as well on a hut-to-hut tour, with as little work.