Back in 2012, after several days on Sweden’s Kungsleden trail, I faced what would become my greatest challenge yet: the seven-kilometer traverse to Nallostugan. What in summer would have been a straightforward trek turned into an epic battle through ever-deepening snow.
“I was kind of having to wade through knee to thigh deep snow, or boulder fields where one moment you’re just ankle deep, the next moment you’re maybe waist deep in snow,” I recounted in my video diary.
“You have to kind of stop and dig yourself out again, find some ground to stand on and continue forward.”
Progress slowed to a crawl as I found myself “crawling using my ice axe and walking stick as support,” measuring progress by picking out boulders 25 meters ahead.
In these moments, I started visualizing conversations with the hardcore hikers I knew back home ‘ the ones who’d tackled everything from the Himalayas to the Arctic Circle. In my mind, I could hear them assessing my situation:
“Yeah, mate, I’d have turned back by now.”
When even your imaginary hardcore hiking friends are suggesting retreat, you know you’re in deep ‘ literally and metaphorically.
The most frightening aspect wasn’t the physical challenge but the time pressure. “The thing I was most scared about was being caught on the mountain overnight,” I admitted. “When you’re making seriously slow progress and it’s 2pm, and you barely feel like you’re making any progress at all, it can get a bit scary.”
I’d started at 8am, but I pressed on into the twilight, racing the approaching darkness.
When I finally reached Nallostugan at quarter to six that evening, I emerged into one of the most dramatic landscapes I’d ever seen. Peaks rose 1000 meters directly from the valley floor, their snow-covered summits disappearing into the mist.
“It’s quite impressive,” I noted, trying to capture the majesty in words, “especially when you are first walking down through the mist and cloud into this kind of dark twilightish valley, to see these kind of massive peaks towering above.”
Originally posted on this post on Instagram