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The Ruovdatjjuhka River disappearing into a slot and heading for the valley.
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Gee I slept well last night, maybe I was starting to relax and get into the swing of walking the Kungsleden…or maybe it was more to do with yesterdays big climb? Last night was also the first night so far that I hadn’t copped any rain on my Kungsleden stroll so waking early I was able to pack up a fairly dry tent. And when I say early I mean early, with the first red rays of the sunrise visible on the eastern horizon when I got up for a slash at around 3:30am it wasn’t that hard to be packed up and ready to start walking by around 7am. While I had a fairly short days walking in front of me today I was fairly keen to get as many kilometres under my boots before that predicted bad weather that I mentioned yesterday, finally arrived.
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The cloud had been slowly creeping closer.
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Whilst breaking camp and eating brekky I’d been watching low cloud creeping closer and closer to my lofty plateau from the north, and on setting off today it was only a matter of minutes before I was engulfed. Thankfully though, while the cloud cut back on the visibility and photo options it didn’t bring any real precipitation…initially at least. The high rocky plateau with it’s lakes and huge boulders looked and felt completely different this morning cloaked in mist than it had in yesterday’s bright afternoon sunshine, different… but still beautiful.
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I only managed a couple of minutes of walking before being engulfed.
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| The Kungsleden... I was now starting to drop down to Aigert. |
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Conditions weren't too bad though... at least I wasn't getting wet.
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After rock hoping the rest of the way across my plateau I passed through a high saddle before starting what was a very gentle and fairly easy descent down towards the Aigert Stuga. The good news along here was that as I lost a bit of height I also emerged out of the cloud, suddenly my world wasn't so claustrophobic anymore. I followed the top of a moraine for awhile as I descended down to Aigert Stuga before dropping down to cross some swampy ground, mostly on boardwalks as I got closer to the hut. The stuga sits on a rock outcrop above a lake and has a bastu (sauna) situated on the edge of the lake, not having stayed in a hut yet I hadn’t had a sauna but it was something that I had to try, so I was all ears as the etiquette was explained to me this morning by the hut warden.
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Dropping out of the cloud the views improved.
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The Aigert Stuga was down in that high valley. Ammarnäs is in the deeper valley in the distance.
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I wasn't totally alone.
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Looking back along the Kungsleden towards the higher country that I'd descended from.
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It was while I was sitting at the hut chatting and enjoying my second breakfast that the rain finally caught up with me and from the look of things it wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry. I was heading down to the small town of Ammarnäs this morning where I was hoping to get a room for the night, so the thought of a few hours in the rain didn’t unduly concern me though. Leaving Aigert I pulled on all my wet weather gear and set off into the rain. The good news now was that I was basically going to be heading down hill for the rest of the morning so hopefully I wouldn’t be sweating up a storm in my wet weather gear and also….well that was about it I suppose!
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The Aigert Stuga.
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The last 8 kilometres this morning were a bit on the damp side.
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On my short stage from Aigert to Ammarnäs I initially followed the edge of a bit of a plateau, occasionally I’d get a glimpse down into the valley where I guessed Ammarnäs was, however for the most part I was just trudging along in my own grey world, my field of vision restricted to that out of the storm hood on my gortex rain jacket. Not that things were boring though, while I couldn’t see a lot I needed to concentrate on not going arse over on the slippery rocks and boardwalks, all of which seemed to be enough to keep my mind occupied today. Once leaving the plateau the Kungsleden started to descend in earnest, now mostly through forest. The Ruovdatjjuhka River and it’s waterfalls were the real highlight of this mornings stroll, probably made even better by the solid rain that was coming down now.
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It was a soft focus kind of a morning now when it came to photos.
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I was concertrating furiously whilst trying not to go arse over on the wet boardwalk!
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I did brave pulling the DSLR out for a couple of shots.
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The Ruovdatjjuhka River.
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After pulling the DSLR out from it’s dry bag to get a couple of photos of the waterfall it was time to set off again, despite my wet weather gear I was stating to get a bit wet now and was getting pretty keen to get down to Ammarnäs, get a room and dry out. Approaching Ammarnäs the Kungsleden follows a series of gravel roads, the roads getting gradually more substantial until I emerged onto a bitumen road just to the south of the township. After trudging my way into town I headed to the Ammarnäs Gardens Hotel where thankfully I was able to get a room for the night.
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The Slagerbäcken River.
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Yeah, I'm not sure why I'm smiling either?
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Closer to town I followed a series of quiet roads.
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Thankfully the hotel had a drying room so I was able to peel off my now pretty wet gear and dry things off a bit, after that it was just a matter of working my way through my ‘to do’ list. Message Sam, have a shower, buy some supplies, eat, drink, sleep…yeah you get the idea. With the rain coming down all afternoon I didn’t really get to explore this little town much, my forays outside pretty well limited to the area between the hotel and the supermarket, although after dinner and with the rain relenting a bit, I did venture a little bit further afield to check out the Tjulån River and the delta feeding into the huge lake Gautsträsket. Returning to my room I settled into to watch a little telly before bed, now with Ammarnäs being a very small town in the wilds of northern Sweden the TV stations were limited to the Swedish national broadcaster from what I could see, kinda like our Australian Broadcasting Commission back home….except that I don’t think I’ll be watching a show called ‘Fucking Amal’ anytime soon on the ABC…maybe it was a translation thing? I'm thinking that you'll really want to concentrate if you type that in for a Google search!
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Trudging into Ammarnäs on what was a pretty wet day.
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Ammarnäs Gardens Hotel
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It was nice to have a bit of space to spread out and get everything sorted for the next stage.
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The Dirt.
I walked 14.9 kilometres and climbed 138 metres on what I’d call an easy day. On my four days on the Kungsleden so far I’ve walked 82 kilometres and climbed around 2140 metres. Once again there were plenty of camping options today. If wanting a roof over your head then the Aigert Stuga is the spot if you aren’t going to make it to Ammarnäs. Speaking of Ammarnäs this little town has everything the Kungsleden walker might need with enough camping and accommodation options to suit most budgets. The Livs supermarket had a selection of freeze dried as well as gas and other trekking essentials. Once again I used Cicerone’s
Trekking the Kungsleden book along with the topo maps on my GPS.
Relevant Posts.
Day 1, Kungsleden, 2019.
Previous Day, Kungsleden, 2019.
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