I recently got home from a trip to swedish lappland. The initial idea with this trip was to use snowcaves exclusively for shelters. But as it turned out, there was very little snow, sometimes It was even hard skiing. 
So reluctantly we had to drag a tent with us. 
As some in our group was a bit inexperienced we decided to follow a popular trail. That is, it's popular in summertime, not in midwinter! As we were quite high up, and close to the winter solstice there was very little light, also because of the mountain around, so there was no visible celestial orb, except the full moon.
The weather turned out to be terrific, calm clear skies, no wind for most of the time. Temperatures ranging between -3 to -24 (a wee bit chilly for my -18 sleeping bag). As mentioned there was little snow in the lowlands, but when yu got to some 1000 meters or so there was some 1-1.5 meter, not enough to dig down anyway.
We saw the rare golden eagle, a lot of ptarmigans (where is the shotgun when you need it??), a couple of reindeers, the mandatory hare, and some moose, that just had shed their antlers. Up in the mountains we saw rather fresh wolverine tracks! Nice as there is only some 200 wolverines in sweden.
Another secondary objective was to try out the elusive LK70 backpack during a longer trip. It turned out to out perform all the packs in our group.
As the dedicated photographer had keep the camera warm, there wasn't to much time for taking mindblowing pics, so I hope these few are good enough.
The trail:
A nice view from one of the camps:
Spot the moose!
Me, with a LK70 (and a 9" sameknife):
So reluctantly we had to drag a tent with us. As some in our group was a bit inexperienced we decided to follow a popular trail. That is, it's popular in summertime, not in midwinter! As we were quite high up, and close to the winter solstice there was very little light, also because of the mountain around, so there was no visible celestial orb, except the full moon.
The weather turned out to be terrific, calm clear skies, no wind for most of the time. Temperatures ranging between -3 to -24 (a wee bit chilly for my -18 sleeping bag). As mentioned there was little snow in the lowlands, but when yu got to some 1000 meters or so there was some 1-1.5 meter, not enough to dig down anyway.
We saw the rare golden eagle, a lot of ptarmigans (where is the shotgun when you need it??), a couple of reindeers, the mandatory hare, and some moose, that just had shed their antlers. Up in the mountains we saw rather fresh wolverine tracks! Nice as there is only some 200 wolverines in sweden.
Another secondary objective was to try out the elusive LK70 backpack during a longer trip. It turned out to out perform all the packs in our group.
As the dedicated photographer had keep the camera warm, there wasn't to much time for taking mindblowing pics, so I hope these few are good enough.
The trail:
A nice view from one of the camps:
Spot the moose!
Me, with a LK70 (and a 9" sameknife
):
