It’s taken me quite a while to write this blog about my last hiking trip in autumn. So much so that it is winter already and snowing outside my window but here we are:
As the pandemic made international (and partially even regional) travel pretty much impossible, I haven’t had the opportunity for a proper hiking tour in quite a while (plus I was on two research cruises, that took up a lot of my time as well). So, I decided that I was finally going to do an autumn hiking tour this year. During my Bachelors and Masters studies, I could only do bigger tours during the semester break in summer and winter, so I was quite excited to go back to an area where I had done my first big solo trip during the summer after I finished high school - Sanfjället National Park in Sweden. A beautiful mountainous area that is the oldest national park of Europe and home to Swedens largest population of brown bears ( I was hopeful to maybe see a bear but wasn’t really expecting it since they’re very shy).
So, I prepared my gear and supplies, packed up my giant backpack and took the train up to Stockholm and from there on to Östersund by night train in a sleeper car (very nice way of travelling!). The last bit was a bus ride to the small village of Hedeviken north of the national park and then I was off hiking in the wilderness. For the first couple of days, I had chosen a winter trail… meaning I had to traverse a bunch of peatlands that hadn’t frozen over yet. That made for rather exhausting hikes but it was also fun and the landscape was beautiful anyways. And I noted with great relief that the colder temperatures meant that there were almost no mosquitos which can be a horrible nuisance during summer in Scandinavia.
During these first few days (but actually also most of the rest of the trip), the weather was rather grey with thick clouds and occasional light rain. But after a stop at the lake Stygtjärn and the waterfalls on its shore and just as I arrived at the edge of the national park with view of the mountain afar, I got to enjoy the first few rays of sun and a beautiful sunset.
I then proceeded through the dense forests at the foot and lower slopes of the mountain, where I met my first Siberian jays for the trip (more on them later). As the dense spruces turned to light birch forest and finally the heather and lichen of the upper mountain, an amazing play of colors:
Evening light atop the peak of Sanfjället.
I think my favorite spot of the national park is the saddle between the main peak of the mountain and the smaller Korpflyet in the South. During my first hike here (which was my first big solo trip), I spent the night there in the middle of a thunderstorm. That was quite the experience! This time, there was just a little light snow, that melted before the morning. But as I got out of the tent, I saw the clouds slowly opening up with the most amazing light developing. So I quickly headed up the slope and took the panorama that I used as the cover image for this blog. After taking the photo, I just stood there taking in the amazing landscape with the beautiful light but as is so often the case with scenes like this, the moment was over in a short while and the clouds closed back in.
Looking for brown bears for the next few days yielded nothing but scat. But that of course didn’t take away from the beauty of the landscape and other wildlife around.
And finally, as I was making my way back down through the forests around the mountain, I got a second chance at the Siberian jays with a family of them ramsacking the trees around me for food. Clearly they didn’t mind my presence and were very curious, so despite the lack of light, I still got quite a few nice shots of these amazing birds!
