notes and images

Kungsleden: Arctic Circle Trekking with a Three Year Old

One hundred kilometers in ten days through Arctic Sweden, with full camping gear and a three year old. Sounds like a good plan right? Hmmm, maybe not so much. Sometimes – just sometimes – the determination not to be those people who gave up everything they loved after having a child in favour of the Eternal Lightness of Brunch can go just a little bit too far. In this case, 42 kilometers of painful load carrying too far.

But seen another way, we pulled off a five day, 42 kilometer trek through Arctic Sweden with our three year old. She, and we, actually had a blast. Mission accomplished. Just.

“I want to go on a really long walk”, Yon said, as we pondered our summer plans. I just wanted to be sure we weren’t in hot, manic, smoggy Beijing, so I was an easy win. “How about Greenland?”, I suggested, and spent a depressing half hour calculating the epic cost of getting us all over there from China (or anywhere, for that matter).

Yon tapped out a Google search: “best long walk in Scandinavia”. She clicked on the first result and said, “Let’s do this”.

Kungsleden

“Kungsleden (King’s Trail)”, says wikipedia, “is a hiking trail in northern Sweden, approximately 440 kilometres (270 mi) long, between Abisko in the north and Hemavan in the south”. Like most people, apparently, we decided to tackle the first quarter of it, which cuts off the main Kungsleden trail and heads past Sweden’s highest mountain, Kebnekaise (2,097 m) to finish near Kiruna at Nikkaluokta. That decision took about half an hour, and the flight bookings another hour. The hardest part is often deciding to go at all, and we’d done that easily.

Lesson learned: my research suggested the easiest way to do this trip was fly into Narvik, take the train to Abisko, hike the trail to Nikkaluokta, then get the bus to Kiruna and fly out from there. On reflection, it would have been easier to fly in and out of Kiruna, and get the bus from there to the trailhead at Abisko. Kiruna could then be a basecamp where you could leave items you didn’t need, rather than carry them down the trail like we did.

This guy’s blog was a fantastic planning resource.

Planning

Yon and our daughter left Beijing in July bound for Iceland, staying with our old friend who owns a farm there. Back in sweaty Beijing, I planned our Kungsleden hike. The short version was this. I didn’t think we could cover the distances between huts – usually between 15 and 20 kilometers apart – with a kid. If we aimed for about eight to ten kilometers a day, though, we might reasonably expect to cover the full stretch from Abisko to Nikkaluokta in ten to 12 days. Sure, it’s more than most people need – seven seems to be about the average – but we had the time, so why rush? Shorter distances meant full camping gear, but if our child could be persuaded to pop out a few hours walking in the morning, play after lunch, take a nap, then pop out a few more hours in the late afternoon, we should be ok. I would have the baby carrier as back up.

The more I thought about this, the more feasible it seemed. We would have to carry a lot of food, but no water, as there was water literally everywhere on the route and you could drink it straight from rivers. To compensate for the low cargo capacity of the baby carrier (most of the volume is taken up by the child) I pulled out my Army disposal chest rig and tweaked around with different configurations until I found something that seemed halfway comfortable. Of course, it always seems easier in your loungeroom, but whatever. At the appointed date, I took it all out to the airport and headed for Europe.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.
▲ You really can drink straight from the rivers, and there are so many nearby there is no need to carry any water.
▲ This was on the last day, when I had moved some of the chest rig load into the vacant baby compartment of my backpack.

Hitting the Trail

▲ Norwegian scenery on the way into Narvik.

We lost a few days in Narvik, Norway, thanks to Norwegian losing our luggage (side note: very poor customer service). This ate into our schedule a bit, adding a little pressure to cover more distance. But when we finally set off by train from Narvik to Abisko, gliding past lovely Norwegian countryside and silently crossing the border somewhere along the way, we were confident and excited finally to be moving. We creaked into tiny Abiskoturist Station around midday, and hit the trail. Day One we actually had a reservation at the Abiskojaure cabin, because I thought there was no camping within that area because it was a national park.

▲ Abiskoturist Station on the train line between Narvik in Norway and Kiruna in Sweden.

And what a first day! It took nine hours to cover 16 kilometers – something like double what we would normally need for that distance even with a kid. Our daughter walked nearly ten of those kilometers, along mostly flat terrain. She couldn’t cover it all, though, so into the baby carrier she went. That first afternoon showed the folly of our plan. She weighs a good 13 kilograms, and when I checked in at the airport I had more than 20 kilograms. So my load was at least 35 kilograms, plus a bit of food that was stashed into the pack and my chest rig. I could move, but only just. It was slow, slow going. By the end, I was, to use a technical term, knackered.

But I was able to find the lady in charge and fortune gave us a room to ourselves. We cooked some food in the bright Arctic evening light and yes, I paid 50 Swedish crowns for a pint can of beer. Damn, I earned it. And damn, I slept well.

Elapsed time, one day. Distance travelled, 16 kilometers.

Day Two dawned bright and blue and we had a big breakfast of porridge. We were slow to get moving, but had only ten kilometers ahead of us. Under that blue sky, everything began to unravel. Our kid – perhaps spoiled by her sedan chair ride the previous day – refused to walk. And once she was in the baby carrier, I had 35 kilograms to haul up one of the few climbs on the whole route (Yon was carrying her share, with something between 25 and 30 kilograms in her own huge pack). To any hardcore hikers reading, or any military or ex-military people, that might not sound like much. But to us, it is. And, I’d say, to most people, it is. I plugged away as best I could, one step at a time, taking breaks every half kilometer or so. The trail went downhill briefly to cross the river, and then I really had to push hard to get up the high steps onto the suspension bridge. From there, there was a short steep climb onto a longer, steady uphill path.

▲ Yon was more than carrying her share.

Back home, even with 20 kilograms, I’d have made short work of this. Here, with the extra 15, I was at breaking point. I have strong quads but I could feel the pressure on my knees. To make things worse, the baby carrier and chest rig combination was not working as well as I’d hoped. It was becoming pretty clear that even ten kilometers a day was unrealistic – or at least quite unpleasant – if I had to carry the kid for most of it. And thanks to the delay at the start, we didn’t have the surplus time up our sleeves that I’d factored in when planning the trip.

At the crest of that climb, we called it a day and set up camp. The second that stuff was off my back and off my chest, I felt better. I bounded down the slope to the river to collect some water and flung the tent up in no time. I set up my old GoPro to take a timelapse of the evening light changing. I pulled out a tiny set of watercolour paints for the kid to entertain herself as we made a big, hot, steaming, hearty dinner and inhaled it into our bodies. It was a beautiful, glorious evening in a stunningly beautiful place.

Elapsed time, two days. Distance travelled, 21 kilometers.

That night, we ran the numbers. When hiking, as with so many things in life, the numbers don’t lie. You only have two factors to consider. How far is it? How far can you go in the time remaining? If the number for the first exceeds the number for the second, you’re done. We were looking at something like 80 kilometers in seven days when we could rely on covering about five to ten kilometers per day. Yes, we were done. So we came up with a plan to attack the route from the other end, traveling incredibly light. All we needed to do was return.

Day Three was similarly beautiful. Blue sky, fresh air, light high level cloud. Mercifully, it was downhill back towards the hut at Abiskojaure. We took our time over breakfast, and at the river we bathed our feet in the icy water and lazed about in the sun like drunken butterflies.

Back at Abiskojaure, we were welcomed by the same staff who’d wished us well. Noone seemed to think any less of us for turning back; indeed, they seemed to think it was the wise choice. We camped there this time, and spent the afternoon at the little lake where our kid had a great time building sandcastles. Yon braved the freezing water for a quick swim and I all but passed out on the beach. Dinner again was big and hearty.

Elapsed time, three days. Distance travelled, 26 kilometers.

Rain hit the valley on Day Four, just to make it interesting. We got off to a reasonably early start and, at least at the beginning, aimed to get to Abiskoturist in time for the last train out to Kiruna, the nearest decent-sized town. When the rain set in, the three of us donned head to toe rainwear. Our kid kept walking, and we were making ground. But again, those numbers didn’t lie. Inside my head was a constant whirring of cogs on an adding machine: distance, speed, time. Unless we really hustled, we wouldn’t make it. And why hustle? This was a holiday, after all. So we slowed down and spent some time gathering cloudberries and blueberries in the rain.

On the way in we had noticed, just about five kilometers from Abiskoturist, a little official camping zone within the national park. It was the only place you were supposed to pitch a tent between Abiskoturist and Abiskojaure (though we saw a few people break that rule). We agreed to spend tonight there, and slow down our journey for today.

This became inevitable when the sky really opened up. I put the kid into the carrier, and wrapped her tight in the big red rain cover sheet I had jury rigged (the baby carrier has an optional rain cover but it’s pretty flimsy and I doubt it would have dealt effectively with the storm we went through). She was warm and dry in there, and quickly fell asleep.

This was the hardest few hours hiking I’ve done in a long, long time. Dressed in heavy rain gear, which was soaking wet, carrying all those 35 kilograms of child and unwieldy stuff, I plugged away on sometimes slippery duckboards with my face into the rain. Yeah, hiking is a fun activity we do for pleasure. No, really, it is. I mean, usually. People passed the other way, some with very heavy loads and others – the hut-hoppers – with small packs. One guy, a Dad with two young but self-mobile kids maybe 12 and 14 years old, caught a glimpse of the kid in my pack. As he realized what he had just seen, he made eye contact with me, and gave me the biggest morale boost ever with just three words: “This is courage”.

Maybe it was. I can think of many situations of life or death which perhaps better deserve the term, but it helped that this Dad of older kids thought I was gutsy for trying to bring my little one out into the wilderness. I probably got an extra kilometer out of that.

▲ The view into the forest from our final campsite.
▲ At our final camp.

Still, even after the rain cleared up and the sun came out and we peeled off all our wet outer layers and the kid woke up and started walking, by around 6pm with still several kilometers to go, we were all looking forward to that little campsite. We finally hit it and again had the pleasure of dumping the heavy load. Imagine being a turtle, who for years has thought he was destined forever to be a turtle, and suddenly realised he could ditch that heavy shell and float around on two feet like Nureyev. That moment of blissful realization of physical and mental freedom is roughly how it felt to dump that gear at the end of the day.

We camped right by the river, cooking and eating on a tiny pebble beach as the sun didn’t set.

Elapsed time, four days. Distance travelled, 37 kilometers.

On the fifth day, we got away early and covered the last five kilometers back to Abiskoturist. The kid found her feet again which made things easier. We were happy to get there though of course it was a bit of an anti-climax, all things considered. There wasn’t even a train; it had been replaced by a bus service.

The driver was what I would have called in high school a headbanger. Long heavy metal hair, straight as a die, piercing eyes. He didn’t charge us for the ride because the credit card scanner was broken, and he cracked weird jokes to all the other passengers as they boarded. I guess you have to get through those long Arctic summers somehow, unless it’s the winters that quirk you up.

We rolled into Kiruna ready for lunch and checked into the hotel I booked on my phone from the bus. How times have changed.

Elapsed time, five day. Distance travelled, 42 kilometers.

1 Comment

  1. Carmen

    Definitely very courageous. I couldn’t help but to imagine what Wednesday will become when she grows up, a navigator? An Environmentalist? Someone who may change the world probably.

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