Day 98. Stor Rosta to Paltasstugan
Posted by: James on April 8, 2009Distance 19km | Time 5hrs | Ascent 180m | Descent 270m
I didn’t sleep that well as there was a lot of movement and noise in the small room with the four of us. I woke at 0630 and got up after everybody else at 0730. Paula invited me to share their breakfast of home-made haddock fish cakes and cranberry jam. It was delicious and surely beats porridge.
The three of them were heading down the valley towards Daertahytta, but stopping in a small Lapp cabin just before. All three had Lapp connections. This meant skiing into the fresh wind with a temperature of minus 9. The visibility was also not very good. I would be heading north with the wind behind me which was a far more comfortable scenario.
We lingered, chatted and Ivar joked with us all, during breakfast and some time after before they packed their sledges and me my rucksack. I was ready to go at 1030.
The visibility was quite poor when I set off and soon got a lot worse so I could just see about 30 meters. The wind also increased from a force 4 to 6. After about 3 km I decided I needed to put my wind proof salopettes on as my legs were getting cold. This was a time consuming and tricky operation. I had to be careful nothing blew away.
Once sensibly dressed I continued north up the valley in a sphere of visibility which was only some 50 metres. Luckily it was pretty flat and I was going up the valley in the same direction as the wind. At times I was almost blow along. The skiing conditions were very good. Not quite the silk conditions of yesterday. There was the odd old ski track or scooter track but they were barely visible and not worth following.
Luckily I had adjusted the settings on the GPS so I could find out my position. I needed it in this flat valley. There were some lakes but it was impossible to tell where they finished and frozen marsh started. I could also not see any features to the side of the valley due to the mist so was reliant on the GPS to pinpoint my position.
After what seemed like a couple of hours I got to the area where I had to bear more north east and follow a different valley. I went on a compass bearing for a good half hour until there was a clearer spell and I could at last see some dark crags and then the shape of the hills on each side. The visibility got better and better until the whole open smooth rolling tundra landscape appeared. There were some steeper hills behind me and one in front but it was mostly quite featureless tundra.
My route now crossed into Sweden and then climbed up the gentle spur of one of the shallow ridges which descended from the mist higher up. At the top of this ridge was a wonderful descent all the way down to the valley where the Kummaeno river flowed. At the west end of it, where the forest started, at the treeline was the Paltasstugan cabin.
I made this easy gentle descent down across open snowfields and then across the sides of moraine piles just before the next batch of poor weather and visibility arrived. There was a flock of snow buntings hanging around the cabin when I arrived and they stayed a while.
I was the first to arrive. Then came 3 parties of Finns and two young Norwegian girls. Everybody pretty much kept themselves to themselves with the minimal cross group conservation. This suited me as I had two blogs to write up and get ready to send when I received Finnish mobile reception tomorrow.
It had been a bit of a tedious day. The ski was dull as I saw very little while I was buffeted by the wind. Then the cabin was quite quiet. I also had to write for nearly 3 hours to catch up with everything.