TS Day 89

Pershyttan - St Gårdsjön

Via Rammsjön, Getingdalen

Wednesday 6 October 2021

I had a slow and nice morning at Benny's place. Packed my stuff and had breakfast. While eating, Benny came back from his mother. I finished my breakfast, then I called Jonas who had interviewed me for Via Suecia back in June! He wanted to interview me again about my hike. After this, I had a loooong conversation with Benny - mostly about hiking and Via Suecia. It was very nice, but also thought-provoking! He thruhiked Sweden last year, and is now trying to get people to become more interested in hiking and thruhiking, which is good, and a cause I'd like to support somehow.

Anyway, after this long conversation I was driven back to Pershyttan by Benny, and it was time to continue walking.

Today, nothing in particular happened, and I walked along roads all day until I reached Hästmossen, where I walked for a little while on a forest road. Then I had a short section that I'd have to walk on a path through Getingedalen, to reach a road again.

This part was TERRIBLE.

I reached a stream that was flooded, and it was also running quite rapidly. I had not expected this... So I tried to walk around and cross on a place that was less wide, which finally worked out. But then, I came to another stream, and I needed to cross this one too. I followed it West, trying to find a place I could get across. The thing with this stream was that the ground was so soft, so I wouldn't be able to just walk through it either. Soon, I was met by a whole area being flooded. I didn't see a way past, so I turned around and walked in the opposite direction. Here I found two footbridges, so I tried to cross on one of them. But it was resting on a very slippery tree trunk, and started to slide away. I backed off, and tried the other one. And suddenly it snapped and I was on my butt, luckily still on the footbridge but so close to the water. It was too slippery to stand up, and too heavy with the backpack on, so I tried to slide back on my butt, but I barely moved. Over and over I tried, trying not to panic since I was so close to falling into the water. Finally, I don't know exactly how, I managed to get my foot on normal ground and was then able to step away from the stream. I tried not to panic as my mind raced. I needed to get across, there weren't any other reasonable ways to go were I wanted, and I had already started late and not walked far today. So I followed the stream upstream (West) again and managed to go around the flooded area. Finally I reached two smaller waterfalls. Above one of them, the stream was really narrow, so I could step across. There was also a fir I could hold on to while doing this. My pulse raced, but I could finally breathe out. I got across!

The next problem was reaching the road. I was far from the path, so I decided to just walk straight through the forest in the direction towards the road. This was easier said than done. After a little while I came to a spot where the forest had been cut down, and new trees had begun to grow. So it was super dense, hard to get through while the ground was very uneven so I stumbled a lot. I also had to go around a bog. These are normally not easy to cross or walk around, but now when it has been raining so much, it was even harder.

After lots of struggling I reached the road. So I just sat down and breathed for a while, trying to figure out where to go next. When I got going, I walked past Blankhult and refilled my water bottle there. The trail was then better, and more like a forest road than a trail, which I appreciated. After this, not much happened. But when I reached Gårdsjötorp I realised I had passed 2000 km! So I took some photos that I meant to post later, and thought about how to go next. There were to potential shelters I could try to reach. One of them meant having to walk along Bergslagsleden and paths again. The other meant more roads, but the issue with this was that the roads were all leading into a military shooting area. I didn't have enough Internet to research if it was going to be accessible tomorrow or not, so I didn't know which way to choose. But in the end I walked to St Gårdsjön, so along the road.

Here I found a cabin and a shelter. The cabin was not for sleeping in, so I was meaning to sleep in the shelter. Buuuut, after having dinner inside and sitting there until dark, I decided to stay there anyway. I wasn't going to leave a trace, and I was going to leave before anyone got there in the morning anyway.

On the other side of the lake, some teenagers(?) were hanging out, I could hear them from across the lake. In the evening, as I fetched water and went for a toilet break, I heard someone scream "helloooo" from the other side. I didn't know if they were calling out to me, but for some reason this made me feel a bit watched and I felt scared. In the evening as I was trying to fall asleep, their torchlights on the other side of the lake felt like searchlights, shining me in my face.

Today's:

Favourite: The good night's sleep, talking to Benny

Distance: 21.5 km

Start time: 11:40

End time: 18:20

Ascent: 404 m

Descent: 295 m

Snickers eaten: 1

Totals (from Grövelsjön)

Distance: 570.1 km

Ascent: 8,455 m

Descent: 9,052 m

Tent nights: 8

Shelter nights: 2

Ice cream eaten: 11

Snickers eaten: 21

Totals (from Treriksröset)

Distance: 2,002.3 km

Ascent: 41,582 m

Descent: 41,626 m

Tent nights: 50/89

Snickers eaten: 64

Ice cream eaten: 34