GB Day 1
Treriksröset-Guolbangohpi
The day didn't start with the best sleep. It was either too cold or too warm, sharing Lukas' quilt between us. When we finally got up, Micke had already had breakfast. We took down our tents and walked the last bit to the helicopter base. We were about three hours early, so we sat down, had breakfast (Micke had a second breakfast) and charged our phones.
Just before we left, two men walked into the helicopter base. They were supposed to take another helicopter, but could luckily join us. They were "fishing police men" and had some lakes they were going to check out in the area north of Kiruna. We headed off, and the two men who knew a lot about the area, pointed here and there telling us about things we were seeing. Indeed an interesting ride!
When we reached the Three-country-cairn we had to circle the area a few times in search of a good landing spot. Finally we found a place that looked good, and landed there. We walked the last bit to the cairn and on the way there almost stepped on a baby chick. Fluffy, light brown with black spots, but no mama in sight. Just as we arrived to the cairn, the boat arrived with a bunch of people, so we decided to wait them out. We had some lunch by the lake among the mass of mosquitoes, horse flies and blackflies. By the time we were done, the cairn was free of people. Just then though, two hikers came from Nordkalottleden. A while later, they helped us take some photos of us on top of the cairn. Yes. On top of. We wanted a cool picture (unfortunately we had the sun in our backs...), so we decided to climb the thing. Which resulted in Micke slipping down and getting wet, and Lukas almost falling down on top of all of us when Kim pulled his arm trying to get up. But we made it! The two Belgians who had hiked all of Kungsleden probably thought we were out of our minds, but at least they had the decency not to say anything about it.
After saying goodbye to them, we were just about to leave when Kim wanted to take the moment to grab the few geocaches that were around. Micke and Lukas nicely stayed and waited together with the mosquitoes.
At this point it was already very late, about half past five. But the sun was so high, so this wasn't anything that we really thought about. We started walking, but wanted to start slow even though we were already 1.5 day late with our start. A problem since Micke has a train to catch, and rebooking is probably tricky when everything is fully booked.
We walked for some 3 km across sand banks that felt more like we were in Scania instead of the very North of Sweden. After those 3 km we had reached Golddalluokta. Here we sat down, had a snack, toilet break, geocache break and made a gruesome competition of killing insects. Finally we headed off again and now it got steep. The trail was easy to follow, ATV tracks until we got pretty far up along the mountain side. Here the tracks changed into a small path with cairns here and there to mark the way.
At one point Micke wanted to have a break, but the mosquitoes were far too many, so Kim put on all her rain gear, the head net and took a "force rest", lying face down into the ground, humming for herself so not to hear that there were mosquitoes buzzing around here face like a giant insect choir.
The rest of the way she wore the rain gear, while Micke and Lukas relentlessly walked in just a shirt and long hiking pants.
When reaching a smaller lake up in the mountains, with a few good camping spots, we decided to stop for the night. Here we had dinner in the midnight sun, and after that Lukas went swimming in the lake - that were warmer than it looked because it wasn't very deep. Finally, he convinced Micke to join, which he did shortly after. Kim weren't so keen though, so when they had gone to bed, she walked off to the water in rain gear (only) and tried removing a little bit of gear at a time to clean, so the mosquitoes wouldn't attack. She also made the mistake to wash her clothes, just to find out that there were clouds coming their way.
Just before going to sleep, we lay down looking out through our tent, watching the clouds dance over the mountain lake. And we were alone, or at least felt very alone, up on the mountain.
Today's:
Favourite: The Mosquito Head Net
Distance: 13.1 km
Start time (Treriksröset): 17:28
End time: 20:44
Ascent (from Treriksröset): 282 m
Descent (from Treriksröset): 86 m
Snickers eaten: 2
Totals (from Treriksröset)
Distance: 8.2 km
Ascent: 282 m
Descent: 86 m
Snickers eaten: 2
Trying to get up on the cairn.
It's official - we have started!
Camping for today.
