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Sarek
Ski-touring in the Swedish Arctic
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March / April 2019.
Alex, Wojciech and I headed off to Northern Sweden for a ski traverse of Sarek National Park. Sarek is one of the largest true wilderness areas in Europe. No permanent settlements, no motorised vehicles, and little accommodation around the edges.
My 3rd trip through since 2009; we started in the South West of the park and spent 2 weeks hauling all of our gear and supplies on skis with pulks (sleds), exiting at the Northern edge.
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"Warning - forecast strong wind peaking around 1600 until midnight. NW around 55 knots. Falling trees, avalanches."
"The forecast's showing 70 knots exactly where you are, wind change will be v.rapid. No warning. Zero to hurricane in an hour. Be prepared! Believe me, you are in the spot of the strongest wind in all of Scandinavia"
Two of the messages received on our Garmin InReach from Dom, our friend providing us with weather updates and support. Not exactly what you want to hear...
We had planned to stop early, at an old weather station building, in order to dig down and secure the tent. These updates reinforced the need to do so: 70 knots / 130 kph / 36 metres per second is hurricane force (shown on the map below as the two larger blue blobs - our route had us neatly sandwiched between them over the next two days). The old weather station kept the worst of the wind off us that night, along with the nearly 2 metre high wall of snow we built up around the back of the tent.
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We chose to head for a small cabin (an emergency shelter, with telephone and a table with benches - quite a luxury to be able to sit up with some back support!). A welcome break from the wind, particularly since pitching the tent in these conditions would have been a challenge (and we had passed a group of German skiers hunkered down for two days, their tents almost flattened by the wind; an experience we weren't keen on replicating).
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Arriving under the beautiful Nijak mountain, a day of skiing in stunning weather drew to an end. We had high winds forecast again overnight and the gently rolling mounds and hills offered little protection; we dug into what was left of the wind-blasted snow and built up some protection around the tent.
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The final river crossing, towards the Ahkka hut (our exit point from Sarek), was a little hairy - large portions of the river both upstream and downstream had opened up so we made our way across cautiously - pulks unclipped and dragged by hand in case we had to ditch them in the event of a snow bridge giving way. Falling and getting pulled into the river under the snow and ice was clearly not an option.