19:40 Abisko Tourist Station
Clean, warm and cozy – my feelings this evening comprised into three words.
Woke up in a soaked tent, had a lazy morning hanging out at the cabin in Abiskojaure and getting an interview done with one of the cabin hosts.
The 14km to Abisko are a really easy hike and the weather was hugely better than the last days, almost to the point where I regretted heading for the mountain station.
Yet the prospect of checking in a backpack containing wet equipment and dealing with the stuff back home was motivating enough to finish the tour today.
Arriving in Abisko I got the last available room in the hotel part and could get all my stuff dried out inside the facility. Ignoring the eminent restaurant I dined on my last portion of dehydrated ground beef for this tour, enjoying the comfort of doing my dishes in hot water from a faucet.
Looking back at the tour of 2017, it has definitely been one of the best ever, though the weather has been way worse than most years.
From a subjective point of view, the ketogenic way of fueling has been absolutely outstanding for comfort and performance and, regardless of test results, this is the way I fuel my hikes (and, frankly, most of my future life).
The abundance of energy, mental clarity and resilience combined with wonderful sleep and lack of hunger during the day makes it an ideal fit for me and I cannot recommend enough that You try it out.
Let me just end this with a huge shout out for my sponsors, Ketonix and Nourish Balance Thrive, I’m incredibly grateful for the support and there’re no words to endorse their products enough.
I definitely continue to use them!
That’s it for this tour, I hope You enjoyed tagging along just as much as I enjoyed completing it.
Stay tuned for a few shorter tour suggestions building on my hike, as I want to make the area accessible to more people.
And remember, Lapland is still here next year and I´ll be back!
Planning to lead a small group of people through some beautiful nature on week 1 so let me know if You’re interested. More on this later!
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Peace // Claes
Again I met some really nice people and enjoyed a pleasant afternoon and evening, it felt great to arrive early and I even got an extra meal in today to refuel a little extra before the last few days of my tour.
There are definitely some mixed feelings about ending the tour, on one hand I look forward to sleep in my bed, have my cats and friends around me again and get back to work. On the other hand I feel a slight anxiousness to go back to ‘the real world’, being out in nature just feels so much more real than dealing with ‘civilization’.
After taking some pictures at the top we started the decent and it didn’t take long before all six of us were sliding down the large snow field using our boots as make shift skis – rather risky, of course, yet all went well and we had a blast. Needless to say it cut the time it took getting down considerably!
Met some people on the trail who treated me to some really nice salami (I think it was Italian), and this was the only piece of food I ate between breakfast and the dinner later.
Right now it’s again too rainy to go out and make a video for you, so I hope I can do my ‘Day 24 video’ tomorrow morning. The clouds quickly squeeze away the last daylight from around here.
Temperatures outside still clearly indicate that summer is at its end and we’re in the season of fall here in the mountains.
After reaching the end of Sinnivaggi and starting the climb up the whole action got considerably rougher and the clouds started closing up. Still I decided to go for the summit as I saw a chance of the weather lightening up. Turning sharply uphill to converge with the western trail towards the summit of Kebnekaise carrying me whole backpack admittedly turned out to be brutally challenging. The tour is partly very steep and rather slippery as the stones have been ground into gravel by many feet passing. I motored on slowly and, at times, felt like I’d never reach the end – a feeling greatly enhanced by the clouds closing in even more, lowering the visibility to just 10-15m. It’s just inherently frustrating to not being able to see where one is heading – until making a mental decision not to care any more and just go on. And that’s exactly what I had to do… I knew that sooner or later I’d reach the summit and until I did, I’d just keep putting one foot in front of the other.
The night here in Kaskasavagge was cold and comfortable, what a difference when not having to make an effort to just keep the equipment dry.
I’m setting out to start the day going over the pass to Goubirvaggi, then follow that valley westwards back to Tjäktjavaggi and enter Sinnivagge. A few km up that valley I know a really good camp site that I intend to use the coming night.
The actual trail along Sinnjijohka is on the south side of the stream, yet that’s a well worn out trail and I prefer to hike on the north side instead. The first ascent into the valley is physically much more demanding as one needs to climb up to avoid a steep field of rocks. After that it levels out and follows the stream up to the grass field in Sinnivagge.
Using the trail kept me roughly away from the wet bushes and scrubs, thereby helping to avoid soaking the boots within the first few km.After about 7km I left the trail and started working my way up the mountain side and turn into the western part of Unna Reiddasvagge. The ground was almost inconceivably drenched were there were no rocks and the rocks themselves were wet and slippery. Approaching the opening of the valley I suddenly found myself at about the same elevation as the clouds and really thought it’s have to hike in fog for the rest of that part.
Nice morning at Hukejaure, I always like to linger a little extra when I visit this cabin and this time I had a lazy morning inside until about 10. Several cups of coffee with coconut oil, some jerky and a few nuts made up a slow breakfast followed by a few cups of tea.
About half way through the valley there is a river crossing and this time I found a place quite a bit upstream of the place marked on the map where I could cross without getting my feet wet. Really a relief as the wind had become increasingly colder and the clouds in front of me got darker and promising rain today again.
