#Kungsleden

[chintzmann]

More Kungsleden watercolours! 1) View from the highest point of the Kungsleden: The Tjätkja pass. Seeing the expanse of this landscape, the beautiful colours, all those textures and its remoteness was very moving and it feels so special to me that I got the opportunity to paint and thus spend a little longer in this place, feasting my eyes and filling my heart. 2) Saying Goodbye to the trail by having lunch in the harbour with perfect views of Njulla. 3) Murky afternoon at Alesjaure. We walked a bit further past the hiking cabins and found a good spot for wild camping halfway down the lake. Alesjaure greeted us in the wildest shade of turquoise next morning. 4) Lunch break up at Tarfala, looking at one of the glaciers. I cooled down so much from sitting still and painting, that it took me 1,5 h walking downhill again, before my fingers weren't numb anymore. You can find Kungsleden part 1 here: https://chintzmann.tumblr.com/post/725753382562840576/i-spent-my-holidays-hiking-the-kungsleden-in

hiking#camping#holidays#holiday memories#Kungsleden#Sweden#long distance trails#nature#landscape#watercolours#watercolors#charlotte hintzmann#illustration#painting

[grrl-beetle]

Sofia Blu Cremaschi

[alienerad]

[a-demain]

Kungsleden, Abisko, October 2022.

[la-vie-en-lys]

From the walk I went on today on the Kungsleden trail for my stupid mental and physical health. It was cold and fuken wimdy, but also spectacularly beautiful and worth it.

[outd00rsygirl]

The Kungsleden packing list v.1

My plans for hiking the Kungsleden were delayed by a year, mostly because I didn’t feel prepared enough and a few things about the prep were still catching by surprise. So I held off. Now I’m ready and this is my first packing list. Photo by Jonathan Petersson on Pexels.com The plan I intend to hike at least 2/3rd of the trail in around three weeks in July, from Abisko to at least Jakkvikk or…

[bergsmotiv]

Aktse vid Kungsleden.

Skierfe och Nammatj i bakgrunden.

[moroccotoubkaltravel]

You wanna spend your vocation? Don't hesitate to come to this beautiful area, this is just one of a lot of amazing places you should visit. ➕➕➕➕➕➕➕➕➕➕➕ #mountainworld #trending #trip #travelblogger #travelblog #nature #adventure #travel #naturephotography #outdoors #mountains #landscape #wanderlust #outdoor #naturelovers #photography #trekking #hike #kungsleden #sverige #forest #explore #visitsweden #camping #friluftsliv #photooftheday #vandring #summer #landscapephotography #fashion 📱ℹℹℹ🔔🔔🔔🔔For more informations: 📞WhatsApp :00212667896163 📩atlastoubkaltrekking@gmail.com (à Morocco, North Africa) https://www.instagram.com/p/Ci2rp-so4re/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[redautism]

dear edd, it's my second week in kungsleden, sweden! you'd love it here- there's plenty of beautiful places to relax and draw. maybe that can be our next holiday, yeah? paul and patryck said that this might be our best adventure yet, and honestly? i agree! as always, i hope everything is well back home. i miss you guys lots, and i'll be sure to bring home gifts for everyone. wish you were here! - tord

au where everything is normal. and fine. the end never happened. eberything is normal. everything is fine. i worry about nothing. because nothings on my mind

[gearsandbranches]

Why am I here? It´s storytime

Today I want to write about something different. About something personal. About the reason this blog exists and why I´ve created it in the first place. About nature and love and anger and hope.

In 2020, the profile picture of this blog was taken:

It was taken on a solo hike through Sweden, a hike that didn´t go as planned from the beginning, but couldn´t possibly have been more impactful and fantastic and marvellous than it was.

I wanted to follow the Southern Kungsleden, a hiking path from the southernmost mountain ranges in Sweden northwards. I had planned this meticulously, every single day, every grocery store availiable (there were three spread out over the 18 day hike), every ecological zone I would be in, every possible spot to spend the night. And I got stopped in my tracks on day two, because I landed in the middle of snowmelt and bad weather and it just wasn´t doable, even less so alone. I had to reconsider, get out of there, back to safety, and plan again. And when I set out on the second part of that adventure, after a few chaotic days, my planning consisted only of a biking map in a way too big scale to be of any use, the actual map, diverted into 10 pdf´s on my phone, and a vague scrolling through a few travelling blogs.

The second hike was the Siljansleden, a hiking path around one of the biggest lakes in Sweden (but when they say "around", it means, 30 kilometers away from it and then back in a biiig sweep). It was me, alone, in deep forest, populated by moose, wolves, bears, wolverines, lynxes, and many other things that hikers are afraid of. But you still have to sleep somehow, so you have to find your peace with that. And I did it by seeing myself as just one more creature of that forest going about my business. Trying not to bother anyone. Trying not to get into anyones way. Just one of the many beings roaming the vast forests, not to disturb and not to be disturbed. I slept in a tent in the middle of the forest, and in the depth of night, when nothing was to be heard but the whistle of the wind in the trees, when the bright midsummer night spread a soft, shadowless light around, I felt safe, calm and deeply at peace.

And so I went on, for 2 weeks, alone with the forest except for 2 stops in small towns where I stocked up on food and rest. Just me and the forest and the occasional chat with a friendly stranger. I encountered animals of different kinds (including a lynx, that was magical, but to be alone with a cat whose head is almost as big as yours at 2,5 meters distance in the middle of the night is, let´s say, INTENSE). I had good and bad and fantastic days, and while I wouldn´t necessarily say that hiking alone in the wilderness is an easy life, it is a simple one: stay warm, stay fed, stay hydrated, stay dry, and keep putting one foot in front of the other. During those two weeks, I turned from a stranger and a visitor in the forest to someone who was at home there. Coming back to civilization afterwards was shocking and jarring, as dramatic as that sounds. I had to walk along a road to the campground in the town of my destination, it was 1,5 kilometres and it almost drove me to tears. The asphalt was too hard and too hot, the sun getting reflected off of it weirdly, the road wasn´t even super busy, but the cars where so loud and it was just TOO MUCH! Was that really meant for us humans to live in? Why? It took a long time to get used to it again, and I never did the way I was before. I also never step into a forest in the same way I did before. Even though I don´t think I could immediately sleep as calmy out in the forest as I did then, the feeling of being at home there still echoes. I know it´s possible. I know what it feels like, to just be one more creature of the forest, to be embraced by it. I know if I went back for a few days, I would feel the same simplicity and joy and peace again. Now, imagine what it feels like when that forest is cut down.

There was a strip of forest that was a former nature reservation close to where I live. Ten acres of it got cut down last year to built a bigger road with three roundabouts. I´ve known this patch of forest. I biked on a trail in it back from work. I´ve explored it with skis and by foot and collected mushrooms there. It was beautiful and it was erased for a stupid road project that won´t solve any of the problems it´s being built for, because bigger roads have seldomly led to less traffic, quite the opposite. We protested, we talked with the city government, we screamed and begged, but it still happened. Our local community then met up after the forest was cleared, to celebrate our activism if nothing else, to mourn together and to find comfort in community. I went there and I saw the destruction and I was FURIOUS! I´m normally a positive, peaceful person, but that made me just BURN with anger. I wanted to DO something, SCREAM at someone, throw a molotov cocktail into the office of the municipality and watch it burn, just as they had watched that forest fall without feeling anything. Quite possibly without knowing what they had destroyed, because they had never been in or with the forest in the same way. I was so incredibly angry and I wanted SOMEONE who was responsible for this to hurt as much as I did. And then I started to collect cones. Because more destruction wouldn´t lead anywhere and because I wouldn´t change anything by being sued for vandalism. It wouldn´t make anything better. But I collected cones and dried them and put the seeds in one of the planting pots on my balcony. And now I wait and hope that they´ll grow in the spring and that I will find a safe place for them to grow big. The trees that were growing in that spot are gone, but maybe their offspring will have a chance.

I still struggle with that anger. It makes me hateful and cruel and I think about spitting that hatred into the faces of every person responsible for environmental destruction. But I start to understand that this anger is not leading anywhere good. My mom once told me a proverb that says "holding a grudge is like poisoning yourself and hoping the other person dies". Being angry won´t lead anywhere and throwing that anger at the immovable wall that is world politics is only going to leave me drained and depressed. So I try to put my energy somewhere else. Planting trees. Working together with the local activist group. Finishing my studies and working for a better future. I still get angry. But I will try to channel it in a different way. Like writing a blog post about it and trying to update more often to spread the knowledge I gained at university and elsewhere.

Thank you for reading this far and I hope you have a wonderful day!

(PS: if by any chance (which is close to 0) that story about the hike sounded familiar, I do have a side blog where I wrote about it before, named @theopeneye)

[chintzmann]

Happy New Year everybody! I had actually intended my first post in 2024 to be the last part of my Kungsleden watercolours. And then I had a look at my latest posts and felt that, really, cramming more landscapes in was a bit repetitive. So, how about plants from the Kungsleden instead? Mind you, these were done at home, based on reference photos (by me and some more sourced from the internet). They are ordered roughly by when we encountered them and the terrain they grow in.

[rostam-z]

You know what they say about #weather in the north country, it changes very rapidly specially in the #Autumn. Here you can see towards #kebnekaisefjällen from #Nikkaluokta. Some of the #mountains are covered in #cloud and others in #sunlight. You don't really need to go very far in #Sweden to get #dramaticweather! #VisitSweden #VisitLapland #Lappland #Laponia #SwedishLandscape #SlowPhotography #LandscapePhotography #FujixSweden #FujixNordic #subarctic #kebnekaisefjällstation #nikkaluoktasarri #Lapland #Kungsleden #Sami #ArcticCircle #Scandinavian #Kebnekaise #Sweden #landscape @stfturist @swedishlapland #SwedishLapland @outbackabisko @stfkebnekaise @nikkaluoktasarri

[alienerad]

[hungerandthirst]

september 2022

photos from sápmi, the traditional homeland of the sámi people. we hiked about 100km over the course of six days on the kungsleden, or king’s trail, in sweden, from abisko to nikkaluokta in the arctic circle.

we began in a forest of red and orange and green and gold, carpeted by ankle-high shrubbery and short, twisting birch trees. as we climbed into the alpine, the landscape became rockier, more punishing. the mountains opened up like a ribcage of the earth and created a wind tunnel so strong that our tents were nearly inverted by morning. everything not wrapped in plastic got soaked through. briefly, it snowed, but thankfully we were able to scramble to lower ground before getting truly caught in the storm. reindeer, alone or in herds, darted across the trail and dotted the scrubland, visible from afar. our days passed in intervals of 18, 20, 22 kilometres on winding rocky trails or boardwalks turned springy from rot in the ceaseless wet. 

at the end in nikkaluokta we came upon a huge wooden hunting lodge with the first hot water we’d seen in a week. guests took their shoes off at the door so everybody shuffled around almost silently, leaving only quiet chatter and clinking cutlery to echo off the ceiling two or three stories above the dining room. we had mincemeat soup with cream and cloudberries, tea, bread with salted butter. we caught the bus back to town. we travelled on.

i’m at an odd point in my life where i’m not quite sure what to do with myself. it’s been a lifelong dream to hike the appalachian trail, but i’ve never been quite sure where to fit it into my life because it takes about six months to thru-hike and (for me, at least) months of training before that. but i think that i’m maybe ready to pencil it in for 2025 or 2026, and then maybe go for a master’s degree after that. maybe that’s something to work towards.

[bereft-of-frogs]

Top five favorite hikes

ooh this is a good one. I'm going to sort of combine ones that I've actually done and goals:

Franconia Ridge, NH. This kicked my fucking ass, but once you actually get up to the ridge, it's so gorgeous. Worth it. I'd like to do it again, but I am so out of shape and you really need to be in decent shape to do this one.

Beehive Trail, Acadia National Park. I like looking at the ocean while also hiking. Best of both worlds. Acadia is my favorite National Park specifically because you can climb up a mountain AND look at the ocean at the same time. Iconic.

I don't remember any trail names, but the day after my aunt and I went to Zion, we went to Snow Canyon in Utah and I remember it being so nice because compared to Zion it wasn't crowded at all and there were a bunch of really neat volcanic rock formations.

The Kungsleden. Look, I learned nothing from The Ritual other than this looks like it would be a really nice hike if you don't go off the trail and plunge into a dense forest where you have to confront your own faults and also mythological monsters. I just really want to do this trek. XD

I would like to climb the tallest mountain in Ireland, Carrauntoohil, which also has a couple of ridge walks that are associated with it. I’m possibly going back to Ireland next year for a family thing, so we’ll see!

Bonus: Fucking Mt. Washington. I’ve been turned back by weather three times. Never made it to the summit. (‘But you can just drive!’ NO. At this point, it’s personal.)

That’s what it looked like the last time I got turned back by weather. Made it to the Lake of the Clouds hut and the staff were like uhhhh, so instead we went up Mt. Adams and watched the summit get overtaken by a storm.

This was sunset that day tho! So gorgeous.

[la-vie-en-lys]

Winter came to Lapland, so I decided to advantage of the sunny weather today and go see what Kungsleden looks like in the snow. Conclusions: it looks like a fairytale.