Sweden to Norway - Roadtrip, Forest & Such - 3

The 18th of August we started off by exploring the Rista fall. There was a nice trail walk along the river. The walk was not very long, but we spent hours looking at the different parts of the waterfall and rapid.


The weather was warm and moist and generally pretty ok for this kind of excursion.

After having spent quite a while in the forest we drove to Åre, a winter and summer adventure area. Ben has been there skiing as a youngster. I've never been there before, but have been wanting to see it in summer.
The larger ski resorts have a mutual webpage for all kinds of activities, Skistar. We saw loads of mountainbikers descending along the hillside, all muddied up and happy. Most of them took the first lift up again. It all looked fabulously fun! Dad had never been in  a cable car so we decided to hop on one up to the Åre plateau, close to the summit, Åreskutan. The summit is actually another 300 m ascent and we didn't have time to go there, so we enjoyed the view at an elevation of 1020 m. Besides, with the via ferrata of the day before and the hike down along the Rista river and back up again, I was quite exhausted and another 300m ascent was pretty much a no go.




We enjoyed the view from the plateau for a while and grabbed the last cable car back to ground level.

We had time for one more stop this day. Tännforsen, the highest water fall in Sweden. Its 37 meter from top to bottom. It has a perpetual rainbow on one side. The rocks in the fall are jagged and the very thought of falling into the water there is quite horrifying.

The walk from the parking lot to the water is a slight descent and I actually had to skip going to the bottom of the fall, due to some Braxton-Hicks contractions. Had been way too active the last couple of days. Well, Ben and dad did the whole tour and took loads of pictures.

Camping that night was at a spot quite nearby right at a road off the main one. We found the perfect spot for the tent and built a closed space between the tent and car with the tarp and mosquito net.

We went to bed in a dry, fabulous night, but woke up in a cloud. Phew it was wet and chilly. That day was a transportation day. We got up in a chilly and moist forest. Actually it had been so chilly that condensation had water dripping off the inside of the outer tent, onto the roof of the inner one and down on us. The shade was quite chilly, but luckily the sun showed up over the treetops within just a little while and within moments my car was steaming off the drops of water. By the time we'd had breakfast and packed our gear the tarp and tent were more or less dry.



This day we crossed the border to Norway, heading west on route E14. We had planned to stop at Brudesløret waterfall on the way (its right at the border), but the place was so small we missed it and drove passed and decided to just keep going.

We did some border shopping in Storlien- prices differ quite significantly between Sweden and Norway and the grocery store was filled with over border shoppers.

After making coffee at a pit stop we drove to Trondheim, a town on the coast. Here we had a break for an hour or so to make further plans. We will be working our way back to the South now. Tomorrow the plan is to visit Trollkirka. More on that in the next post.

The evening and night was spent on something like a marsh land in a no name place situated between tiny villages called Vinjeøra and Orkanger. A gravel road led to an abandoned exit overgrown with small pine that my car just about could drive over without scratching. A flat space at the end was perfect for the tent and car with a tarp.

We saw not one single mosquito during this evening. It was silent and calm. We had dinner and a walk and tucked in for the night.

Sweden - Roadtrip, Forest & Such - 2

Day three started off with some fabulous sunshine over our campsite. The night was quite comfortable and not as cold as we expected sleeping so near the water.
We made some breakfast and headed back to the car.
Our plan for this day was to visit Docksta via ferrata site. It is situated in Höga Kusten, the high coast, which according to them is the highest coast line in the world.
There is a commercial via ferrata. It is a bit pricey, especially if you are used to the free ones in other parts of Europe. This one is expensive even if you have your own gear. We were quite surprised, but we had decided on trying it so we did.
Dad had his harness with him, but needed the ferrata kit with helmet. Bro and I had our own gear.
So, after lunch we headed up the wall.

We chose to begin with the easy "white" route, just to see how dad was doing. Oh, and me of course. I wasn't sure of how my body would cope with this kind of climbing, being in the beginning of the third trimester and all.
The route split a bit higher up into an easy and a difficult one. The first part went very nicely so we decided on the hard one. This route was actually pretty much like the easy one, with the distinct difference of being more exposed, so requiring more mental control.
Actually it is quite exposed at places and I was a bit surprised that it required climbing up holding on to the wire at many places, meaning ascent without gripping the wire was not possible. Gloves are an absolute must because the ascent is very hard on the skin due to the wire gripping. Disappointing...

Dad was quite upset for a part of the way. The route was way too exposed for him and we needed to aid him in choices for gripping and stepping. Well, we must say in our defense that he has throughout his life been quite an adventurer, so we were pretty sure this would work. He's more sedentary life as a retiree has softened him up a bit, but with patience and positivity we reached the top. On arrival he suddenly burst out in excitement and laughter over having managed this project.

We sat at the top for a while and had some fruit, cupcakes and water, enjoying the view, before hiking downward again.

The route down was almost as steep as coming up. We chose the "blue" route, that passes a little cave area.
The descent was a bit hard on my pelvis, but I made it, as did dad with his old hip joints.

Afterward we filled up our water supplies and found a nature reserve close by for over-nighting. The place was a bit popular and there were a couple of caravans and another car with a couple in a tent.
Still it was remote enough that we felt safe to stay there for the night.

After a nice dinner we decided to bunk down for the night.

Next morning our first view out of the tent was filled with fog. It almost looked like we were inside of a cloud. The tarp we had set up was still hanging in its place and soon we were making breakfast under it. Coffee, bread, cheese, yogurt and the last of the muesli.
We had several small showers of rain during our breakfast, but the tarp and our three legged camp stools made life very easy. Having the car so close by was very nice too. Pretty soon we had everything packed and headed off toward Åre.

On the way we stopped in Sollefteå, a smallish town where our dad lived as a young man. He had quite a walk down memory lane. The old center street was as he remembered, but without some of the shops. Otherwise the town seemed to be slowly starving. Every other shop was empty. After a coffee and a short walk we continued on our way.

Next we stopped by Döda fallet, the Dead fall. It used to be an impressive whitewater rapid. Back in 1790 and before timber and logging was an important trade, but timber was destroyed in the rapid. Also salmon could not pass which made fishing good below, but not above. It was decided to build a canal to bypass the rapid up to the Ragunda lake above. This work had quite some obstacles as the canal bottom was sand and sediment and kept flowing back in. Men died in rock-slides and such. Also the work was continuously sabotaged by locals who were afraid of losing fishing income and work with log portaging. Also farmers were afraid of damage to their farmlands along the way.


Anyhow, in 1795 the bypass canal reached the lake, but the river flow was slow, so the dam was closed. What no one had anticipated was an unexpectedly large spring flood the year after. An unprecedented rain fall caused the lake to leak into the canal and began eating away at the sediment. This became the 1796 flood disaster, the largest historical environmental disaster in Sweden. The whole of Ragunda lake, a 1000 million liters of water was emptied within a 4 hour period, moving as a flood wave through the canal and the surrounding forest and villages.
The sediment redeposited at Indalsälven delta, where we spent our first tent night.

It was quite fascinating to see all the rocks and boulders of the dead fall that normally make out a bottom of a river. The area has loads of glacial potholes, cylindrical holes drilled into the rock by water and rotating gravel, some of which had burrowed a hole straight through a boulder. There is something really fascinating about rocks.
After the walk around the Dead fall we headed off toward the west.

After some additional driving we came to the campsite where I'd decided we would spend the night, since I was craving a shower, Ristafallet camping. This time at a live waterfall called Rista. It was quite rainy when we arrived so not having to pitch the tent in that weather was a relief. We spent the night in a tiny cabin, with no running water, just beds, fridge and a cook stove. There was a service building with a kitchen, washing machine and showers and toilets. Just what we needed.

Before dinner that evening Ben and I headed down to look at the actual fall. The force of waterfalls has this strange allure. I just feel I want to get as close as possible. Ben actually went closer than I did. I had this nervous feeling about the slickness of the rocks and feeling a bit heavy and inflexible I decided to play it safe.

Sweden - Roadtrip, Forest & Such - 1

The trip up north started in the morning of the 14th of August. We set off from Gothenburg and decided to hurry out of our usual play ground and not relax before we were some ways off. That meant a 7 hour drive to Uppsala, where we stopped for the night. We thought we would be there faster, but road wasn't really what we expected. The drive was quite slow, as the so called motorway constantly changes to a regular road so you keep having to slow down from 100kmh to 80kmh to 60kmh, back to 80kmh, down to 60kmh, up to 100kmh, down again. Very frustrating. 

The first night we spent in the town of Uppsala at a hotel, Arena. The plan was a visit at our favourite shop during vacations - Decathlon! Wohooo!!! Those are only established in the vicinity of Stockholm, to our great disappointment. We've been wishing for one on the west coast for quite a while already.

The hotel seemed fairly new, budget type. A bit plastic. To my huge disappointment there was no water boiler or tea or coffee in the room. We didn't go to the bar for that though, but bought our evening meal at the supermarket 100 m off. After dinner it was already pretty late and we headed to bed.

Day 2 we started off with a nice hotel breakfast before heading of to Decathlon. There we decided to go glampers and bought three legged stools to make sitting around the camp area easier (something that later was a real blessing). I also got a new fleece sweater. I tried on a regular jacket the same brand as a pair of my hiking pants, but had to admit that I'm way too fat for that one at the moment. Ben's eyes bulged as I tried it on sending me into a laughing fit. That face!
Oh well, I look forward to not being preggo anymore.

Afterwards we headed off first to Falun to visit one of dad's oldest friends. After a coffee and a cinnamon bun there we drove to Timrå and found a nice spot by the waterline where we set up camp. It was at the outlet of Indalsälven, the Indal river that crosses most of Sweden horisontally. We had borrowed our brother's 4 p tent and decided to start off with that one. We did bring our 1p tents too, in case the big one was too problematic or just if we couldn't find a camp site large enough.

This evening we found a good enough camp ground for this huge tent, though. This watery area had quite some mosquitoes and we actually had to use our head nets. The fore room of the tent we had is big enough for the three of us to sit there on our stool, with our backpacks and the trangia, so we made dinner and hung out in there. The evening ended with a fabulous yellow full moon over the water of the Baltic Sea.
After a late dinner we settled in each with our own stuff, such as listening to audiobooks, writing this blog and just relaxing.

In retrospect - Road trip on the Swedish west westcoast and southern Norway - Part 3

Our plan was to sleep out in the free this night, somewhere near the coastal area of southern Norway.

We actually arrived so late at our destination (due to a mishap earlier in the day - forgotten item at a stop, so we had to drive back and ended up more or less going in a circle for 3 hours due to that) that it was already dark. No worries though. We looked up something that resembled a foresty area on a map and headed there.

It had actually been quite rainy and stormy earlier in the evening, so I guess being late had the positive of the storm having ended. Otherwise I bet we would've been quite miserable, being late AND wet.

We had, of course, brought our head torches, so that we could rummage around in the car with the torch light and only bring what we needed for the night and next morning. So off we headed into the night-moist forest. We each had our own tents, mattresses, sleeping bags, under layer of warm clothing in case the night got chilly (wasn't so bad actually) and one of us brought a pillow. I actually brought two mattresses, because I usually experience that the cold conducts through the mattress and I end up freezing. I have one of those old style mattress rolls and an inflatable one too. I even considered using a foil blanket to really boost heat saving.

Yeah so we had those too, foil blankets. 

Aside from that we had a storm kitchen (trangia), a gas burner, water for coffee and porridge in the morning, other food stuff (bread and such) and regular hygiene stuff.

 

The right of public access to the wilderness otherwise known as the freedom to roam is strongly established in the Nordic countries. The rights include hiking in the wild, picking mushrooms, sleeping in a tent ( although not too near private residences), swimming in lakes, kayaking, fishing with a rod in fresh water. They also include some obligations, however. You are not allowed to harm, disturb or damage wildlife or crops or pick endangered plant species. Littering is forbidden! If there are no trash cans, you bring all trash with you out of the nature zone.

Sometimes in the summer using open fire is forbidden. In Norway this applies from April to September, in the other countries it depends on forest fire risk, which from time to time can be substantial in some or many areas.

In Norway the freedom to roam applies to the so called "utmark" - areas without private residence, industry, farmland etc. Crossing farmland is only allowed during winter.

Right-of-access - Norway

After a while we found a tent site in the darkness. We picked it for its open space and trees that could be used for a tarp, rain cover. A bit of fiddling in the dark got all tents erected and by that time it was time to go to bed.
The first picture above is actually taken at about 1 AM, so the sun doesn't completely set even at that low latitude.

We had expected more rain, but luckily got to wake up to a fabulously sunny morning.

Before long we had breakfast underway, boiling water for coffee and porridge, setting up a little breakfast area. The colours were crisp and clear and the air fresh and uplifting.

Packing our gear went swiftly and luckily the heat of the sun dried most of the tent fabric. I always find it unsatisfying to pack a moist tent cover or under-layer.

Next we headed off to a crag not too far away from where we had spent the night.