GB Day 60:

Sjöändan - Vålåstugorna

Via Vålådalen

Tuesday 7 September 2021

This morning Lukas had an early alarm, an actually got up early too. Kim didn't feel like it though... But after lots of persuasion by Lukas, she finally got up and got ready. We ate the rest of the food that we'd bought the day before at Ica, which meant we also didn't have to boil water.

Today there was the (probably) last road walking to be done with. We put in our headphones again and listened to some podcasts, and also did a few stops to geocache some. Then, when we arrived in Vålådalen some time after 11 AM, it was time for lunch. Here they sold food, so Lukas bought a souvas wrap, while Kim had waffle buffet 😋 It was reeeaaally nice. It was also nice to get to rest our legs properly. Here we also got to know that there had been two Gröna Bandare at Vålådalen that left earlier this morning. Likely Helena and Jonas - and yes, after Checking their tracker signal we saw that they got going this morning.

But all nice things must come to an end, and we needed to get to Vålåstugorna, where we also hoped to get to see Helena and Jonas again. So we headed off, at first faster than at the road, because the trail was nice to walk on despite being super muddy. It felt nice being back on a proper trail, going up in the mountain again, because we hadn't been on one the last 15 days, since Slipsikstugan. But very soon, the muddy trail was the least of our problems. As we climbed higher, the winds - especially the gusts grew stronger, and the on and off drizzle turned into a constant light rain instead. Several times it felt like the wind would knock us off our feet, and once it even did with Kim. We had checked the weather forecast not much earlier and the gusts were definitely worse than what it said.

But we fought on. On our way we also got to see a lemming (we think, Kim saw something incredibly fast, small and round, hurry across the road) and loooots of baby frogs. Other than that, nothing in particular happened. We continued in the shitty weather, every step hurting in one place or another, but in the end, we made it.

We payed for sleeping inside, then started hanging our went clothes and change into new dry ones. We then spent the evening in the kitchen, talking to some other hikers by another table. It was very pleasant.

Today's:

Favourite: The lunch in Vålådalen

Distance: 32.7 km

Start time: 07:42

End time: 18:38

Ascent: 844 m

Descent: 418 m

Snickers eaten: 1 (Kim)

Totals (from Treriksröset)

Distance: 1,278.2 km

Ascent: 29,157 m

Descent: 28,672 m

Tent nights: 37/60

Gröna Bandare spotted: 23 + 2 🐶

Via Suecia-hikers spotted: 2/4

Snickers eaten: 36 + 1 (Kim)

Ice cream eaten: 21