July 28, 2023, Kungsleden, day 6
It rained heavily during the night but we were comfortable and dry in our bedroom. We met the 4Js at 7 am for breakfast and returned to them their fully charged power banks. Breakfast was really good. In fact, our entire stay at Saltoluokta was very good. Even though the bathroom was communal we never had to wait.
Finally, at 8.30 am we managed to tear ourselves away from the buffet to head out at 9 am.
Along the climb, we met and talked to Joly from Leeds about "All Creatures Great and Small", amongst other things. We agreed that Siegfried in the original series was so much better than in the remake.
At the emergency shelter, we met Anna who introduced herself as the mother of Lars, the other Anna's husband, who would be ferrying us across Sitojaure.
Zoey, from Belgium, who we'd first met on the boat crossing over to Saltoluokta, kept leap-frogging with us but we ended up walking together to the shore of Sitojaure after a brief rainstorm during which we could hear distant thunder. Just the three of us took the motor boat together, steered by Lars, across Sitojaure at a cost of 380 SEK each.
Climbing out of the lake valley we had to go over a broad saddle on this side of which we intended to camp. We met a German guy who told us that the higher stream was dry. We all backtracked together to get water. Zoey only had a 1L bottle so we gave her one of our extra water bags to carry. "I have energy", she told me. Oh good! We gave her the 3-litre bag to carry.
Going uphill we passed the two German guys. They were about Patsy's and my same age but were obviously tired so we left the first good campsite for them. Continuing uphill I thought a spot off the side of the trail looked promising. After investigation, I returned to the trail and told Patsy and Zoey we should camp over there.
While we were waiting for our dinner to hot-soak Zoey came over and asked if we could take a look at her stove. "I think it's broken", she said. She was right, it was broken. It was a cheap Chinese MSR Simmerlite knock-off. The Simmerlite has its own problems. It's aluminium that threads onto the steel canister but the stove's threads wear over time and fail. This Chinese version was even worse. The piece that threaded onto the fuel canister was made of brass and knurled on the outside where it had been press-fit into the aluminium base of the stove. When threaded on too tightly, which is what Zoey had done, the knurled brass had chewed up the soft aluminium causing the joint to fail. What a piece of garbage! There's no way to fix this on trail. Off the trail, a pair of needle-nose pliers and JB Weld might effect a repair.
A rainbow appeared to brighten things up a little.
We boiled water for Zoey but she'll be cold-soaking for the rest of the trip unless she camps near other people. They don't sell stoves along the trail, only fuel, and she's doing a side trip tomorrow so she'll be a day behind us.
July 29, 2023
Kungsleden, day 7
In the middle of the night, 2.30 am, I had to get up to pee. The sky looked like a sunrise. When I returned to the tent Patsy said she thought she'd left her gloves back where we'd filled up our water bottles yesterday. I moved the alarm time up to 3.30 am to allow ample time for her to go back and look for her gloves.
Fortunately, the gloves were in the tent but we got going early anyway. This was also fortunate because it took us a lot longer than wwe'd anticipated to get to the next ferry dock. We arrived there at 8.30 am, still in good time to catch the 9 am ferry. This ferry cost 300 SEK per person.
The boat could only carry 8 people at a time so the captain had to make at least two trips. We were on the first trip. The lake was turquoise, full of glacial flour coming from the Sarek mountains.
As always, we had to climb steeply uphill through a forest but this one was infested with mosquitoes. We stopped at a bridge to make hot drinks but the mosquitoes were really bad. We had to use head nets.
Finally, we broke through the trees where it was pleasantly windy. At an emergency shelter we found inside the two Indian guys we'd been leap-frogging with after we left the boat, Luggish and Tiru. They're both civil engineers living in Stockholm. This was their fourth time section-hiking the Kungsleden.
Patsy and I decided we'd camp before dropping below the treeline. At the last stream crossing, we filled our water containers hoping to find a campsite at or near a saddle. It was very rocky but I did manage to find a suitable spot at 4 pm. No sooner had we set the tent up than it started to rain.
Luggish and Tiru passed us and stopped to chat again. They were planning to camp down in the trees, a little before the next Stuga about 6 km further. We hope to make it all the way to the Fjällstation at Kvikkjokk tomorrow, about 23 km. I set the alarm for 3 am.
22 дек 2023
