GB Day 50:

Tvärån - West of Valsjöbyn

Saturday 28 August 2021

We tried to get up early as usual, but ended up sleeping in... As usual. When we finally woke up, it was just as when we woke up in the middle of the night. The inner and outer tent had stuck together, it was humid inside the tent, Kim's sleeping bag was all wet on top and it was frost on the outer tent. This is also one of the reasons none of us felt like getting up, it was way too wet and complicated. Finally, Lukas got up to pee and tightened the tent so the walls weren't stuck together anymore, and a while later, Kim got up and started drying the tent with a Wettex. Meanwhile, the sun had started drying up the tent, so during breakfast, Kim sat in the sun in the open abside of the tent. This was our very first frost night! We're not too excited about more of these as they make everything wet... But the slow morning made everything dry up, even our wet shoes, which was appreciated. But we could only appreciate it for quite some time - a few hundred metres later, they got all wet and muddy again. We trudged on with Vinklumpen in sight - after passing it we had planned to have lunch. The way there was partly wet and muddy and partly okay, we followed an ATV track across the little hill and down into the wet and boggy forest. Here we managed to loose the ATV tracks at one point, but went for the fence around the reindeer slaughterhouse. Here we also, fittingly, found a privy!

After the slaughterhouse we finally reached the road. A dirt road on which we first met some more hunters. A little further ahead, there was a bridge crossing Bågavattsån. Here we stopped to have lunch and call Elise, cause we had an idea we wanted to share with her! We also made a call to "Valen" (Valsjöbyn Camping) to book a room there for the night. Then we put our headphones in and started the roadwalking of the day. During the roadwalking we managed to see some people, and a squirrel! We also wrote to Jonas and Helena, and they happened to be at Valen too, unfortunately it was 1,5 km in the wrong direction, but at least we would get to sleep inside and take a shower, which was needed after the very warm day today.

At Valen we found out something stupid though. We had missed that the store was closing at 14 today since it was a Saturday, but we thought we'd be okay since it would open at 10 the next day, or, we'd pass the next one the same day. But, they had just changed their opening times, so neither of the stores were open on Sundays now. Hmm... What to do now?

Kim sat in the sofa, counting food and counting days trying to figure out if we could make it to Kall (and our friend Elise) anyway without buying anything more than we already had. So in the evening, to save on food, we found a pack of pasta that we shared together with one freeze-dried chili con carne that we'd gotten from Jonas and Helena. If just Jänsmässholmen was open now, maybe we could make it...

Today's:

Favourite: The morning in the sunshine

Distance: 30.0 km

Start time: 10:57

End time: 19:45

Ascent: 441 m

Descent: 840 m

Snickers eaten: 1

Totals (from Treriksröset)

Distance: 1,066.9 km

Ascent: 25,350 m

Descent: 25,353 m

Tent nights: 34/50

Gröna Bandare spotted: 23 + 2 🐶

Via Suecia-hikers spotted: 2/4

Snickers eaten: 35

Ice cream eaten: 19