Liam and John have just returned from a 9-day winter holiday in Jämtland and Härjedalen. That's a mountain area more or less half way up Sweden, close to the town of Östersund, which might be in your atlas.
| We caught the night train from Göteborg on Friday January 15th after work, at six o'clock, together with Lars Pareto who comes from Östersund. We had so much stuff, we had to take a taxi to the station -- two pairs of skis each, three bedrolls each, a rucksack each, an extra rucksack, and an extra `boot bag´. | |
Next morning, at an unholy hour (before 6a.m.), we arrived in Östersund. We were met by Lars' dad, who took us to their house and fed us breakfast. Saturday was spent on preparations, buying food for the week to come and woollen underwear for Liam, and then on driving to Vemdalsskalet, a medium sized ski-resort in Härjedalen. Lars' grandfather had the foresight to build a holiday cottage at Vemdalsskalet just as the ski resort was opening, with the result that his descendants now share access to a cottage just 2-300m from the lifts. We moved in there on Saturday evening; a lovely place, if small, with an open fireplace and a charming living room. So that Saturday wouldn't be entirely `wasted´, we drove down to Vemdalen, the nearby village, in the evening, and skied cross-country for an hour or so. Lars managed 10km, while Liam and I managed 2.7km, but it was much enjoyed by all.
On Sunday, we skied at Vemdalsskalet proper. The resort is a nice size for a day's skiing, spread over two mountains, with cannon snow on one, and natural snow on the other. We had time to ski more or less every trail there. We started off in the easier slopes to build confidence, but by the end of the day we were skiing on the only black slope there, with great enjoyment. (Ski slopes are graded by colour: green (very easy), blue (easy), red (more difficult), black (difficult), and it seems that Liam and I have at last graduated to the black slopes). We had perfect snow: the temperature was a mild 3-4 degrees below zero, so the snow stayed nice and soft while we were warm, and there were so few people skiing that the snow remained as if freshly prepared all day. (Usually the snow becomes very bumpy in the afternoon, because the spray that people throw up when they turn collects into heaps). Lars, who is an excellent skier, played tricks for Liam, such as skiing on one ski. Of course, Liam had to try it directly! I tried it myself: it isn't as hard as one would think, until one makes the mistake of putting the other foot down for balance, which is invariably followed by a fall!
On Monday, Liam and I took the car and drove to Björnrike, a nearby ski resort, for another day's downhill skiing.
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Björnrike is where Liam and I spent a lot of time last year, when he was only four. He wanted to go back to the green slope where he first learned to ride the ski-lift, so we did. I left him there for a few minutes while I went to buy a film, and by the time I came back he was bored. The slope (if one can call it that) wasn't in the slightest as exciting as he remembered it! |  |
Then we moved to a `red´slope where we skied a lot last year, and had some fun out of that, and then skied almost all the other slopes before returning to the restaurant by the green slope for lunch.
After lunch we decided to go straight to the two black slopes at Björnrike, leading down from the highest top. Both turned out to be entertaining, but one led down into the snowboard park, an area with big mounds of snow for jumping over, and a `half-pipe´, a kind of artificial valley with a semicircular cross-section for skiing up the sides of. Liam greatly enjoyed skiing over both, and since I fell over once, he decided to `show me´ how to do it every succeeding run! On one run, as Liam was making his way down the black slope, a woman standing at the top asked me `How old is he?´. And when I answered `five´, she said `How tough he is!´ (in Swedish, `tough´ means bold, or smart, or `cool´). She was looking rather apprehensive herself! When I told Liam about it, he was over the moon. I should add that five-year-olds are an unusual sight in the black slopes; in fact, I don't think I've seen any other children close to Liam's age there.
In the meantime, Lars had made a ski tour from Vemdalsskalet.Using cross-country skis, he had skied about 30km around a circuit in the mountains, and he was determined that we should all tour the same area the following day. But since we had also planned to ski downhill again at Katrina-Klövsjö, yet another downhill resort, Lars suggested that we ski across country the following morning to Katrina (a distance of around 11km), and then ski downhill in the afternoon. So that we shouldn't be carless afterwards, he drove the car to Katrina himself in the evening, and then skied back again.
| The following day, Tuesday, we tried to carry out the plan. We set off from Vemdalsskalet on cross-country skis, but after two hours, we had travelled only 2km, up to the hunting lodge above the valley. As we refreshed ourselves in the lodge on hot blueberry soup from our thermoses, we realised the original plan was unrealistic. Liam isn't ready for longer cross-country tours yet. But of course, we still had to collect the car from Katrina. Lars kindly suggested that, since he had toured the area the day before, he should take Liam back to the cottage while I skied to Katrina to fetch the car. So off I set. |  |
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An hour later, I had covered 6km to Storhogna, a wonderful trip through a traditional shielings with wooden cottages, a lap way-shelter with wigwam-like `kåta´, across a beautiful ice-speckled stream, and over a high plateau with a seemingly endless expanse of whiteness in all directions. Up on the plateau the wind became quite strong, and the snow began to drift a few dm over the ground, and I saw something I have never seen before. Although the plateau seemed uniform, here and there the wind formed currents that blew stronger than elsewhere, and one saw apparent `rivers´ of drifting snow, maybe 50m wide, snaking across the plateau. Well, why should the air be uniform: nothing else is! It was beautiful. |
After the village of Storhogna, though, the trip took a different turn. My route took me through the forest, where the snow is not packed hard by the wind. As a result, I found myself wading through half a meter or more of deep powder snow, which is very hard work! At one point, I even lost a ski: it just slipped off my foot, and I had to fish in the snow to find it again. After less than a kilometer, which took me over an hour, I noticed that I had crossed prepared ski tracks several times. In the prepared tracks, the snow is packed by machine, and skiing is much, much easier. So I decided to find a route to the car on the prepared tracks, which might by longer as the crow flies, but would still be much quicker in reality. At last I succeeded in doing so; a Saab has never looked so welcome! Gladly, I drove back to the cottage.
Our plan was to move from the cottage at Vemdalsskalet to Lars' parents' cottage in Jämtland on Tuesday. So when I finally returned to Vemdalsskalet I found that Lars had almost finished the cleaning needed before we could leave. Before long we had loaded up the car, and set off for Jämtland, Lars at the wheel. The trip ought to take around an hour, but after around 30 minutes, shortly after we had passed Katrina again, on a tiny road to the cottage, Lars crashed the car! Actually it wasn't really his fault: the road at this point is narrower than the snow-plough's blade, with the result that the plough leaves a safe-looking surface which is actually wider than the tarmac. Lars drove too near the edge, a wheel ran off the tarmac into the (invisible) grass, and the whole car suddenly slipped off the road and came to a stop buried in the snow on the verge! Then our troubles started. Although the car was undamaged, and we were uninjured, we just could not get it back up onto the tarmac! We tried everything, even sawing down some young spruce trees to provide extra friction, but the car just could not pull itself up onto the tarmac. In the end there was nothing else for it but to call out the emergency services. Thank goodness for mobile phones: the whole two hours we were at the roadside, not a single other car passed.
So there we were, sitting waiting for the tow truck to come, when Lars suddenly says `Shall we have dinner?´. He doesn't like to waste time! In a few moments he had got out his portable stove and was grilling sausages at the roadside. Quotable quote of the trip: as we sit there, in the cold, by a crashed car, facing a bill of a hundred pounds for the tow truck, and eating sausages grilled on a spirit stove in the middle of the night, Lars says `What really irritates me is that we don't have any mustard!´.
At last the tow truck came, and pulled the car back onto the road, and we arrived at the cottage at around ten o´clock. We made another dinner and turned gratefully into bed. But the next day, Wednesday, we didn't feel up to carrying out our original plan of a ski-tour to Helags (Sweden's highest mountain south of the Arctic circle). Instead we drove back to Katrina (by a different route!) and spent the day skiing downhill, as we had planned for the day before. To revive Lars' interest in skiing downhill, he borrowed a pair of my telemark skis, which require a different technique, and spent the day trying to master it. He is annoyingly good at it, despite almost no practice, at least compared to my many weeks of effort!
Lars telemarking
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Katrina is a smaller resort than Vemdalsskalet or Björnrike, but proved fun even so. Once again the black slopes were the most entertaining. Katrina has one black slope which is both steep and has unprepared snow, which I ventured onto once. For a change, I was the first to ski that slope! The unprepared snow was deeper and softer than the pistes, more like natural snow in the mountains, which was fun. But the combination of unprepared snow and such a steep slope was beyond me, so I fell many times and in the end decided not to ski it again.
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On Thursday, we decided to dig a snow bivouac. We set off in the morning on Lars' parents' snow scooters, heading across the lake by the cottage and into the mountains. Snow scooters sound and smell like a lawn mower, but are incredibly fun to drive! They consist of a pair of skis at the front, which are steered by the handlebars, and a band under the back, which is driven by the motor. They can get up to 140km/h or so, although I never drove above 60, which already feels very fast. |
| Because the snow is not flat, the scooter bucks like a bronco, and one has to throw one's weight from side to side the whole time to keep the thing on an even keel. Liam rode sitting in front of either Lars or me, and thought it was tremendous fun! |  |
Anyway, we set off with two scooters, and a trailer full of equipment, and around twelve o'clock we found a suitable snow-drift for a bivouac. A bivouac is a way of camping out in the mountains in the winter, and consists of a hole in a snow-drift which one spends the night in. Anyway, Lars found a drift in a hollow which he thought would do. The hollow was perhaps 15m wide, and half filled by a drift against the lee side, with a very clear edge over a meter high. I thought the drift was too small -- it was smaller than those I've seen bivouacs in in the past -- but when we checked it, it proved to be sufficiently deep. We had an avalanche probe with us to do that: a kind of collapsible pointed stick 2.4m long, which we stuck through the snow we planned to dig into, to check the depth and that there were no unexpected rocks where we planned to sleep!
| After checking the depth, we set to to dig a channel into the drift. The channel was to be shoulder width to permit easy digging, and deep enough to let us stand upright in it without our heads sticking up above the surface. Once the channel was about 2.5m long, we dug out two spaces on either side of it for bunks; one for Lars, and one for Liam and me. The spaces have to be deep enough and high enough not just to permit one to sleep, but also to sit comfortably with one's feet in the central channel; it is amazing how much snow has to be moved! Moreover the snow inside a drift is hard-packed and heavy, not the light fluffy kind that falls freshly from the clouds. It isn't easy to toss on a spade. Building a bivouac is a lot of work! |  Liam helps to dig the bivouac |
Lars did the lion's share of the digging, while I concentrated on cutting snow blocks -- blocks around 50x100cm which are needed to roof over the channel. From the books, it sounds as though you just slice them out and stand them on their sides to freeze solid, but in reality the things crack and split at the slightest opportunity. After many hours work, we had around eight intact blocks; just enough to roof over our channel.
As it began to get dark, around 4:30pm, and after four and a half hours of digging, the bivouac itself was ready, and we decided to roof it over. Horror of horrors, we had dug the channel too wide! Our snow blocks were too short to bridge the gap securely! The first block went on safely enough, but after that they either were too short to bridge the gap, or collapsed in the middle when we had them in place. We got a pair of blocks up by leaning them against each other, one from each side, but after that we were stuck. As darkness fell, and the cold wind began to blow, we felt quite desperate about the prospects of securing shelter for the night.
Finally, we gave up hope of any elegant solution, roofed the channel with our skis, and piled block fragments any old how on top of them. By so doing, we managed to cover all but the last meter or so of the channel, and we made a shelter that we could comfortably retire inside to cook some dinner. Thankfully, my gas lantern worked, and Lars cooked us some hot pasta on his Trangia spirit stove.
Over dinner, we noticed how warm the bivouac felt compared to being outdoors, but the draught through the wide-open doorway was quite chilly. By the end of the meal, we felt jolly cold. We decided to go out for a walk before bed, to try to get some heat up in our bodies before the cold cold night. Outside, the stars shone wonderfully brightly, so far from any other light source, but it was bitterly cold -- Lars guessed 10 to 15 degrees below zero. Yet when we returned to the bivouac, we felt a `wall of heat´ as we climbed back inside.
| That inspired me. Surely, if we could only block the entrance, we could attain a much warmer temperature inside the bivouac. I began to dry-stone-wall the hole, using what snow-block fragments remained, and after more-or-less blocking the gap with those, I dug some fresh snow fragments inside the bivouac, and used them to plug the larger gaps. Ideally one should block the doorway with a single snow block that can be removed when one wants to go out. Well, we were far from that ideal: if anyone needed a wee in the night, that would be the end of our door! Yet even so, when the `door´ was complete, we felt a dramatic rise in the temperature inside. At most, my jacket thermometer read plus seven Celcius, a very warm and comfortable temperature. Despite the warmth, we had little problem with melting snow: although it must have been melting, I suspect most of the water soaked back into the snow instead of dripping down on us. |  Relaxing in the bivouac |
 Lars by the `kitchen´ |
Quite soon after our walk, we decided to turn in. We all had warm sleeping bags and waterproof covers, and Liam had also a fleece liner for extra warmth. I had decided to take my boots inside my sleeping bag, as conventional wisdom says one should (to keep them warm for the morning), but when the time came my sleeping bag was too tight for me to get them past my chest. Presumably one should put them in the bag first. I couldn't be fagged to get out of the bag again, and actually the boots were quite OK in the morning even so. I did put a bag with Liam's wet boots and gloves under my knees, however, to dry them overnight. |
| Believe it or not, the night was warm and comfortable. I slept better than I usually do when camping in the summer, and the cold patch under my knees caused little problem. I woke up to find that Lars had already broken his way through the doorway, and the view of the mountainside in the morning sun was quite breathtaking. |  Morning view |
However, we did encounter some problems with the cold. As first up, Lars tried to cook porridge for breakfast on his Trangia, but he couldn't light it! Trangia stoves run on meths, and in low temperatures, meths just doesn't burn. Lars held a burning match to the surface, and the meths still didn't light! In the end he could only get the stove going by placing a lighted candle (night-light) under the meths reservoir to warm it. Once the stove is lit, of course, the heat warms the fuel, and the problem disappears.
Also, our sleeping bags were soaked with condensation -- a warm, sweaty body inside, and freezing temperatures outside, makes for condensation in the insulation. Mine was especially soggy, thanks to my bag of wet boots and gloves, and I was glad we weren't planning another night outdoors. The items were pretty dry alright, but I wonder whether the method is really a good one, if one is planning to be out many nights in a row.
| Anyway, the experience taken as a whole was just wonderful: much warmer and more comfortable than one would expect, and as with any form of camping, waking up outdoors is so exotic. When Liam finally awoke and stuck his head out of the cocoon of insulation around him, he was over the moon. Sleeping in the bivouac was the best experience of the entire trip for him. |  Emerging from the bivouac |
 At the kåta |
After demolishing the bivouac to recover our skis, we set off on the scooters again. This time we drove to a lapp settlement which is now a café (closed in January, though). There we lit a fire in a traditional lapp kåta (a wooden wig-wam shaped building) and grilled sausages for lunch. I tested my petrol stove for the first time, with great success -- petrol is more reliable than meths, where combustion is concerned! At first it sounds foolhardy to use petrol in an outdoor stove, but in fact the thing is quite undramatic to use. It works rather like a blowlamp: the fuel line passes through the flame, so that the pressurised fuel is vaporised before reaching the burner, where it then burns cleanly with a small blue flame. |
We ended the afternoon by `water-skiing on snow´. Lars tied a rope to a snow-scooter, and I held on for grim life while he swerved to left and right. It's quite unnerving, let me tell you, to get up to such high speeds on a pair of flimsy touring skis! Afterwards Lars complained that one usually does it twice as fast! I tremble at the thought, although there certainly is a thrill to it. Liam tried it also, if only at walking speed.
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The next day, Saturday, we went to see a waterfall popular with ice climbers. It's just a 2km walk from the road, a good distance for Liam. You may not know that even a little trickle of water down a rock can build up a big clump of ice when it freezes. The waterfall had frozen in the same way: a twin falls maybe close to 100m high, it had frozen to two enormous ice towers, with swellings and folds like a giant drapery over the rock, and each with a myriad icicles. Under and over the ice the water still flowed, gradually building up the ice-fall further. A stunning sight! And here and there on the ice, the climbers were making their way up. Liam was absolutely gob-smacked: when we reached the falls, he stood watching in silence for 15-to-20 minutes, which is highly unusual for him at the moment! |  |
| You might be wondering how on earth people climb up ice -- how do they hold on? Actually, they don't: not to the ice, anyway. They climb with an ice-axe in each hand, and take a `hand-hold´ by chopping at the ice until the head of the axe sticks in it. On their feet they wear crampons -- metal devices with sharp spikes sticking out all round -- and they take a `foot-hold´ by kicking their toe spikes into the ice until they stick. It may sound precarious, but it works. However, although it is fun to watch, this is not a sport I will be trying! |  |
Finally, on Sunday we made one last visit to Vemdalsskalet for a last day of downhill skiing, before returning to Östersund and Lars' parents. They entertained us with a wonderful dinner of Jämtland specialities, and then we caught the night train home to Göteborg, and arrived back, tired but happy, at 9:30 on Monday morning.
It was a great week, and we're looking eagerly forward to doing it again!
We both didn't like Pepsi. This is what we ate. We ate pasta boudda. The ice climbers were very good at ice climbing.