Sweden 22 December 2023 - 7 January 2024

Vittjåkk

We went to Umasjö before New Year's day. This is a holiday cottage of Magda's family near the Norwegian border. It was a long drive. We turned off the main road and stopped to stretch our legs near Arvidsjaur. No one expected to see such a winter fairy tale.

The blue line show our track. Shift-click on the track link will open it in nakarte.me.

At first we skied through a sparse forest covered in deep snow.

Slowly the forest became even more sparse. We skied among the snow-covered trees and admired the beauty.

The trees were covered with snow on one side only.

We are looking down from the edge of the plateau.

We went along the edge of the plateau, slowly gaining altitude.

Every tree here is different.

Some trees have completely bent under the weight of the snow, while others are still holding straight.

A sea of fog spread out in the valley below us. Here and there the tops of hills were sticking out of it. We no longer knew what we are looking at: lakes, forest, hills? The fog covered everything. And the moon presides over this beauty.

Yasha and Luna are posing in a snowy frame. The snow turned out to be very hard. It took Yasha a long time to free this tree from the snow.

A snow desert.

Our highest point. We didn't free this tree from the snow, we left it as it was.

The Snow Queen's Kingdom.

We went downhill. The hill is much shallower this way.

There is a lot more snow on this side of the hill. We entered the forest again.

It feels so good to break trail across the wilderness.

Huge ice crystals formed on the tree branches.

By the time we reached the car park, it was almost dark. The moon had come down almost to the horizon, and it was much more yellow and larger than in the daytime. We drove to Umasjö in complete darkness.

Umasjö

The blue, red, black, yellow, green and light blue lines show our tracks on the 29 December in the daytime and in the evening, on the 30 in the daytime and in the evening, on the 31 in the daytime and in the evening. Shift-click on the track link will open it in nakarte.me.

The next day we skied up one of the valleys. The cottage is right by the road in the forest. If you go up a bit, you quickly get above the tree line into the tundra.

The higher we went, the stronger the wind became, the less snow remained on the hills.

The visibility has deteriorated.

The lake Över-Uman is below us. We have been skiing around it all week.

A two-day skiing trip

The weather forecast for the next few days was good, but it was going to be very cold early in the New Year. We went on a two-day hike.

As we got above the tree line, we followed a snowmobile track. It is marked with these posts. They really do reflect light at night, we have checked. In the distance, a cloud was perched on the highest mountain in the area.

Solitary birch trees still grow here and there.

We skied for a while, about 10 kilometres. Our final destination was this hut by the lake, where we were going to spend the night. We were beaten by two snowmobilers just before we got to the hut. To our joy, the drivers just had a snack in the hut and moved on. The hut was all ours. The building on the right is a toilet and a shed with firewood is a little further away.

When we got to the hut, a snowmobile driver carried this animal out on a scoop. We later determined it was a pine marten. It was found under the table. Most likely, it had gnawed through the insulation and made it into the hut, but could not get out and died of hunger.

It was cold inside, very cold. But with time we lit the stove and heated up the house. Some of us also skied around the lake to keep warm.


The stove was heated red hot with split firewood. Good thing it didn't melt.	It was around 15-20 °С below zero outside.

The younger team members played a very engaging game of "Beans". The hut became warm: near the ceiling the temperature was around 23 °C, but near the floor it was only 10 degrees Celsius.

After dinner, everybody was very warm. We kept the fire burning all night. Every hour and a half a "duty person" got up and added wood to the stove.

During the night we used up almost all the firewood. In the morning we had to cut and chop more wood for the next guests.

We tidied up the hut and even mopped the floor. Ready to head back. There is a strong wind outside making it quite chilly.

On the way back we wanted to take a different route, but eventually came out on the same road.

The wind is picking up, but going down is easy.

In this wind, your face quickly gets covered with frost, but the mask protects you well from the wind. The mask can be pulled up to the nose, leaving only a small opening for the eyes.