Scandinavia 2012 VII. – Sarek 4, The Return

Around one 1pm we packed our camp and moved across wet plains of Sarek back to our homes. In order to have the return trip more interesting we chose to use another more route despite it was more complicated. The rain wet marshlands. The distance, which would in dry conditions take us around an hour, took several for we had to choose carefully the driest way possible. Regardless our effort our boots wee soon full of water. When I had taken off my shoes to fix my shoe cover, I pour out a good amount of warm water.

Our plan was to cross marshlands on bottom of the hill we had gone around during our arrival to the mountains. Now we wanted to go around the hill from the other side, from north along a lake. It wasn’t easy to walk there as stones were soon replaced by higher vegetation and everything was wet and unpleasant. Guys used compass and GPS all the time, just to be sure. After we left the hill, our point of orientation, we made a good use of this. Soon we faced depression related to the lake since we had to go around it for a long time. At this moment, there was lot of dense vegetation making our movement uneasy. Weather was decreasing gradually and night was coming soon. We were beginning to feel tired so we set up a camp on the first place we found suitable.

We lasted out the night in peace. When I had get out of the tent in the morning to go to the toilet I was happy as I saw the peak of near mountain. I only imagined such a view the day before. I thought if weather is improving but my hope soon perished. When I get out of the tent for the second time, weather was just same as the day before. We packed our things and moved off.

We knew we had to get on a Sami road. However, we didn’t know how long it would take and how the road would look like. When we encountered first small piles of garbage such as biscuit wrappings, PET bottles etc. we had realized we were close already. Magda, a Czech girl, we met in the beginning of our journey across Sarek had told us the Sami people often throw garbage in nature. Soon we got on the road, it was larger than we dared to expect. Since then our journey was smooth. Even weather improved and it stopped raining. We walked few kilometers along a great lake until we reached a crossroad with Kungsleden. There we already orientated ourselves. We had only few kilometers ahead to finish our journey. Near our car on a camping place we set up a camp. It took us long to light wet wood and cook some dinner in a pot. We changed clothes and wet ones we hang on bushes and trees around. Soon we had to get them back since it began raining. So we went sleep to get some energy, get to our Felicia and continue in our journey.

The Sarek National Park wasn’t particularly welcoming. It showed us some of its beauty but only for a while as it covered it back into mist. We would like to see rest of its picturesqueness some other time, if we manage to get there again…

Text/photo: Kristýna Bartůňková