With the days finally starting to get a little bit longer, I have been reflecting back on an earlier trip this year. To celebrate the winter solstice, New Years, and Christmas all in one, we decided to do one last camping trip for 2021. We chose a skiing route along the Öreälvsleden in Northern Sweden. The river runs for about 150 miles before flowing out into the Baltic Sea, and along the entire length is a hiking trail. Not only that, but there are rustic cabins about every 7 miles along the trail, making it easy to skip a tent and just hike (or ski) until you get tired.
We left on a Saturday morning with our bags weighed down with good food, warm drinks, and Christmas gifts, and took two buses a couple hours before getting dropped off at a small village, seemingly in the middle of nowhere.
With fresh snow still on the streets, we were able to ski right down the middle of the road for about a mile before the trail started. From here on to the point we would hop on the bus home, we were making fresh tracks through the woods.
With the winter solstice only a day away, the sun set at 1:45 in the afternoon so we quickly had to pull out our headlights and ski under the stars.
While we knew that there were several cabins and Adirondack-style shelters along the trail, we weren’t entirely sure where all of them were located as there were barely any maps of the trail.
The past two weeks had been incredibly snowy and nearly a perfect winter wonderland.
However, the day we left the weather warmed considerably and after a couple hours skiing it began to drizzle. The rain, while not too bad on its own, turned the snow into a sticky mess and as any skier will know can be incredibly frustrating when your kick zone builds up with inches of heavy wet snow and it begins to feel as if you have on snowshoes instead of skis.
In an attempt to keep any glide we could, we turned to desperate measures and smeared Burt’s Bees hand lotion along the ski with pretty mediocre results (come to the shop and buy some real de-icer instead!). Finally, tired of slogging through the slush we stopped at an Adirondack shelter overlooking a bend in the river. While not as homey as some of the cabins we had skied past during the day, we soon got warm and cozied up with some mulled wine and a few gingerbread cookies (Ok actually a bunch of cookies, but hey it was basically Christmas).
The next morning, we woke and made some rice porridge with cinnamon, cream, and oranges, a classic Christmas breakfast in Sweden. The rest of the day was a 16-mile ski along the river. Because the river has gouged a deep canyon through much of the area, it made for some steep skiing at times. We made sure to stop plenty though and enjoy good food. After all, it’s not very often you bring an entire Christmas ham and a bottle of champagne on a backpacking trip. Finally, we stopped for the night at a cabin a few miles shy of our destination the next day. With a fire going, we fried some potato hash over the fire, ate some more cookies for dessert, and turned in early. After all, we had to wake up early tomorrow for “Christmas” morning.
