The Quiet Picture

Move over Fiskhålsgraven. I have a new favourite ravine!

My big Messlingen photo project is to document the ravines in the region. Fiskhålsgraven and Evagraven are easy and the rest of the ravines require a varying degree of effort, but they all can be reached during a day-hike in any case. Today’s hike took me to Svartmorgraven, which is easy to reach even if in the end Sportstracker had logged 17 km for me. It’s an easy 17 km though where the hardest part is right at the beginning when you take the trail from Messlingen towards Fiskhålsgraven. But once you get above the tree line, you can start walking parallel with it until reaching the ravine and the ground is easy. The kind of hiking I like the most, actually – I love the wide open spaces in the tundra and here in Messlingen in the oligotrophic conditions, there’s not a lot of growing in the tundra either so it’s easy to navigate around the scattered dwarf birch bushes.

I didn’t know what to expect from Svartmorgraven, I just assumed it would be smaller and less interesting than Fiskhålsgraven. But it really took me by surprise, it’s possible that Fiskhålsgraven is deeper but Svartmorgraven has tons of character and it’s also longer than its more famous brethren in the east. It means that you can walk up and down the ravine and constantly discover new details, one more photogenic than the other. There’s also a brook that runs through the ravine, providing some waterfalls. Would you believe that I didn’t have a tripod with me? I wanted to hike lightly but I guess that’s the best guarantee that you will find tripod-worth subjects, just leave the tripod at home. There’s even a couple of nice small waterfalls above the ravine and it’s possible to jump over the brook so you can explore the ravine and waterfalls from both sides.

What an amazing place! I really fell in love with it and was delighted to see all the greens. There are birches and rowans and other things that will turn colour in the autumn and make the place even better. Today started out sunny but it was mostly overcast when I got to the ravine. A little bit surprising to see that the ravine works even in sunlight, I’ve felt that it’s far too contrasty when I’ve visited Fiskhålsgraven or Evagraven on a sunny day. Not sure how it will look like later in the afternoon and evening light is probably no good, but now that I was there around noon I had no problems with contrast.

One thing is for sure – I don’t care how long the hike is, I will be there in September. I know I’ve said that about a lot of things, but if someone told me that I can only visit one place, then I would pick Svartmorgraven. No hesitation!

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If anyone is missing closer instructions on how to get to Svartmorgraven, I will post them separately at a later time.

05:25 – Somebody knocks on the door. I try to open the door from the left side (like at home), it fails miserably. But in the end I get the door open from the right side. “Hello, I’m your new neighbour. If you’re planning to drive out today, then you should move your car to the main road because we will have a big truck block the road today”. My cabin is by a cul-de-sac, so there’s only one way out. I take the keys and park the car at the first best lay-by by the bigger road. It seems to be a nice morning though, foggy at the moment but the sun is clearly on the go. But I am so tired from yesterday’s hikes that all I can do is crash back in the bed.
06:45 – Somebody knocks on the door again. This time I remember how to open it. “Can you move your car a bit further out? It’s too close to the junction, the truck needs more swing room.” So I move the car, see what a beautiful morning it is and give up on sleep.

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One thing I have been dreaming about for several months it seems, is the waffles at Djupdalsvallen. I know it sounds silly to miss something you can easily make at home, but there’s so much more to it than just the waffle itself (which, I have to say again, are the best I’ve ever had).

The target of today’s hike was Lill-Mittåkläppen. I’ve been up to Stor-Mittåkläppen a number of times but the smaller mountain should also be good for flowers and it’s one of the 60 toppar peaks. The day was warm, so I couldn’t wear any more layers than a t-shirt. Blood-sucking demons… everything from mosquitoes to gnats to horse-flies. And then I had to get across big boggy areas and very soon I felt that my feet were wet. Whether it was because of walking through water or sweaty feet in the hot sunshine, I don’t know. But I don’t like the idea of water soaking the Gore-Tex, in my experience the first time the Gore-Tex hiking boots are soaked through, they lose their water-proofness (which obviously wasn’t so good to start with, if they get soaked through…) so they kind of lose their purpose. But it has happened with several boots so I know it’s a fact, no matter what the brochure says.

Anyway, once I was across the bogs, I faced a reindeer fence. I got lucky and quickly found a hole in the fence, so I was able to crawl through. Then I had to cross a small creek and after that it was all uphill to the top of Lill-Mittåkläppen. I had a look at the melting snowfield in the steep side of the mountain for some flowers, but I lost my interest quite quickly when I almost lost my footing a couple of times. It would be a quick way down, but rather painful I think. Up on the top of the plateau, the biting insects finally left me alone. But I wasn’t done with flying critters yet, now I had a pair of gulls circling around me, apparently they have a nest close by. I was a little bit worried that they would start dive bombing me, but I got spared from that.. even if they flew so close to me that I could hear the swoosh.

And after all that hiking and wading and climbing and crawling and biting, I found that I couldn’t actually reach the top. There’s another reindeer fence that surrounds the top from this side and I couldn’t find any opening in the fence that would’ve allowed me to go through. I didn’t feel like following the fence either, I was getting a little bit worried about the time. Djupdalsvallen closes at 16:00 and I had to get a waffle, no matter what! So it was with some bitterness that I gave up, I will still consider this mountain as conquered even if it bothers me that I didn’t actually stand on the highest point. But as you can see in the picture, I was very close in any case.

Since I didn’t like the idea of wading through those mires again, I had this bright idea of going over Stor-Mittåkläppen. Exactly what made me think that climbing a second mountain (which is almost 200 meters higher) would be better than getting wet feet I’ll never know, and I can honestly say that halfway up the steep slope I was seriously questioning my decision-making process. Again. Why are my ideas good only when I get them?

But I made it to Djupdalsvallen with over half an hour to spare. And the waffle was just as good as I remembered it was. An adventurous day with a perfect conclusion!

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I have a love-hate relationship with hikes like this, I hate them when I’m doing them but afterwards when I get back safe, I love them. My biggest concern is that one day I will hurt myself pulling out these silly stunts like exploring the steep side of a mountain with a heavy backpack that can throw you off-balance. I can’t always even call for help – for example today, there was no mobile coverage until I was almost on top of Lill-Mittåkläppen so sometimes I’m well and truly alone. If I hurt myself so badly that I can’t move, I will die there. Nobody knows where I am and nobody will miss me until I should be back at work. So this is a little bit scary sometimes, but what the heck. I’m doing what I love doing and if I have to stop doing it, then I will stop living. Easy decision.

I read in Härjedalens kärlväxtflora (as mentioned yesterday) that there’s a very rare dandelion (Taraxacum crocodes) growing on the eastern shore of the lake Messlingen. Now, all dandelions look all the same to me, but the book assured me that this particular dandelion is different.

I found some dandelions. They all looked the same to me. I snapped some shots of them anyway for later analysis (at home with proper Internet connection).

In the afternoon I drove to Hamrafjället. Whenever anyone starts to talk about flowers in the mountains, Hamrafjället will come up sooner or later in the discussion. To be honest, I’m kind of over it by now – sure, there’s a lot of flowers there that I’m not familiar with yet, but my interest in botany is not going in that direction. I’m more honed in on some particular species, I feel better when I have a clear target of what I’m looking for, like the ferns now and before them, orchids. So the reason I went to Hamrafjället is that I wanted to get to the top of Småhamrarna. It’s the lower of the Hamra peaks, I’ve been on top of Hamrafjället 2 or 3 times already but it’s only now that I’m kind of collecting the peaks of “60 toppar” that the lower peak caught my attention. And the reason I am only “kind of” collecting them is that I have no intention of conquering all 60. Some of them just look like too much trouble so I won’t bother get there just so I can claim an achievement that was only created as a tourist attraction. I have some opinions on which peaks were selected among the 60 anyway… But like I mentioned about the plants, I need some targets so the 60 toppar is as good as any, until I come up with a better plan.

It was an overcast day with the clouds hanging low, even the Småhamrarna peak was shrouded in mist when I started my hike. But gradually the clouds were clearing away and when I was back at the car, the sun was shining. But by now I had done two over 7 km hikes today and the idea of making something out of the evening light wasn’t appealing to me at all. If I had some company who would tempt me otherwise, I would probably have gone along, but alone as I was, tiredness was my main motivator and I just wanted to go home (=cabin) and have a cup of tea and look at the new pictures.

Speaking of the pictures, I was carrying the macro lens again while the Powershot served as the landscape tool. I was halfway back to the car when I realised that I hadn’t used the macro at all, so I was in a hurry to find something to do with it because I just hated the idea of dragging that heavy gear without using it. Since Sunday, I had also planned to take pictures of plants that I hadn’t photographed yet, so the common butterwort (Pinguicila vulgaris) was just the ticket. It’s a common plant and we have it in Loos, but I’ve never taken the trouble. Because trouble it was – the darn thing is swaying like crazy in the wind, even when there’s so little wind that you hardly feel it on your skin. And it’s also a painfully 3D plant, meaning that the lower petal is pointing straight out so it’s not physically possible to stop down far enough to generate the DOF required for it. So shallow DOF it is, I have my common butterwort picture now. Next!

I had this great plan, a short hike in the morning and then wait for the weather to improve and do a longer hike in the afternoon. A slight problem though, the weather got worse in the afternoon. Since I don’t have any Internet connection or even a mobile phone signal at the cabin, I can’t check the weather forecast in the morning to help me plan for the day. Yesterday when I checked, it told me that afternoon would be better…

In early evening when the raining finally stopped I put on my rain gear and took off towards Fiskhålsgraven. I wasn’t interested in the ravine this time, but I was very keen on checking out the little brook that runs parallel with the trail. When I got to the brook, I was feeling less and less enthusiastic about the whole thing though. With the rain jacket and pants on, it was hot. I had covered my hands and face with mosquito repellant, but as the water trickled down on me from the trees as I walked through the thick forest to get a better view of the brook, I knew the repellant would be washing off. And when I stopped, the hordes of mosquitoes were all over me. Not very pleasant. So I found myself hoping that I wouldn’t find any photo opportunities, and when I did, I tried to find all kinds of reasons why the picture wouldn’t work anyway. It took a lot of will power to set up the gear and take a picture anyway!

I also found some “new” ferns. Since I didn’t have the Powershot with me, I had to use the SLR for the ID shots. It meant that after I had used the polariser for the waterfalls, I had to remove it so I could take some snapshots of the ferns. And then I found some waterfalls, so it was back on with the filter. When I came across another fern that I needed to ID, I almost screamed out loud! I was anything but enjoying the conditions.

The best waterfalls are upstream and when I got to this one particularly fine spot, I forgot about my misery and happily composed my pictures. After all that walking through a wet and dense forest, it was slightly ironic that this spot was so close to the trail that I needed to clone out a trail marker in one of the pictures. The brook got less interesting again further up and the misery of the hot rain clothing and itching mosquito bites surfaced again so I didn’t think twice about turning back.

The Messlingen area is rather oligotrophic so there’s hardly anything of any botanical interest growing here (not including the lake, that’s another matter). However, this brook is maintaining its own little botanical world – perhaps not very many different species, but some of them are very numerous, I have probably never seen so much alpine blue-sow-thistle (Cicerbita alpina) before. Orchid-wise I found a few heath spotted orchids and one hot spot for the lesser twayblade, a very small area with dozens of this small flower. But the most interesting discovery however was the hard fern (Blechnum spicant), I know there is one spot a few km north from Loos where this fern still grows, geologically isolated. My guide showed it to me a few years ago and back then when I was a beginner with orchids, a fern didn’t really set my world alight. But I took a picture of it anyway and it helped me to keep the fern in my mind, so when I saw it now I knew immediately what it was. The interesting part of this discovery is that it’s not supposed to grow here, no more than in Loos. The 1992 flora inventory (Bengt Danielsson, Härjedalens kärlväxtflora) only gives 11 confirmed spots for this fern in Härjedalen and the closest one to Messlingen is east from the Grundsjön lake. So I’m pretty chuffed about my discovery!

I’m on vacation. Two weeks! Amazing luxury, I don’t even want to hear when was the last time I had such a long a vacation. The cabin is ready enough to be my home for the whole period, I have hot water and the toilet ventilation works. The biggest problem I have with the cabin is the lack of furniture, the lack of storage space is driving me crazy. I have my things spread all over the floor (well, nothing new there, I have things all over the floor at home as well…) but it’s the kitchen area in particular where the lack of storage space is a problem. I’m waiting for Ikea to deliver my order, I was silly enough to think that the 5-7 working days delivery time mentioned on their home page would cover the whole country but I’m not so lucky, it takes them 10 days which means that I will only get the furniture on the 11th. Unless it’s delayed, of course.

I spent the Saturday mounting the furniture I already had. The weather is nothing stellar so it’s not like I’m missing out on anything major if I skip a hike and I also just realised that two weeks is a long time – there’s a lot of hiking to be done yet!

So the hiking started today. I drove to Rockvallen, it’s great for orchids and other flowers and then up on Kariknallarna you have the waffle cabin (even if their waffles are nothing special, what I really miss is Djupdalsvallen) and from there, it’s an easy hike to Hästkläppen so I can claim a new peak.

There’s really nice alpine forest on the way up. I was delighted to see all the ferns, the season is still early and the ferns are bright green. The early season was evident up on the alpine tundra as well, there is some snow left and in one place the trail was blocked by a big snowfield. I reckon some spots are only a month away from becoming glaciers – the snow is probably gone in August and in September it could already be snowing again. But of course it varies from year to year and somehow I get a feeling that the season is late this year.

When I started climbing up to Hästkläppen, I found a lot of dwarf cornel. It’s not a rare flower but maybe I don’t visit the places where they grow because I don’t often see them. So I made the most of the opportunity and picked a younger individual which still had a pale green colour, normally those bracts are white. And note, the actual flower is only the black cluster in the middle!

And something very cool happened when I was approaching Knallen. There was a huge bird in the sky, so I grabbed my binoculars (which I’m finally carrying with me, after years of cursing that my binos are in the car) to take a closer look. It was still only a dark dot against a white sky, but the size was obvious – must be a golden eagle! After following it for a while with the binoculars, I finally decided to try and take a picture. I only had the 150mm macro lens which is no bird lens for sure, but it was able to focus on the small dot without hunting at all. The crop is ridiculous but the silhouette is clear. Further in the distance I saw another big bird but it had a white tail, so I wasn’t sure if it was the same species. But when I checked the bird guide later, it turned out that juvenile golden eagles have white tails. This was the first time I saw a wild golden eagle, and I got two of them at once! And you know what, during all that time that I was observing the eagle, it didn’t flap its wings at all. Not once. What a cool experience!

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Towards the end of the hike I was developing a bad headache that started from aching shoulder muscles – either I hadn’t been drinking enough, or the backpack is too heavy. I now have a hydration system in the pack which is very nice, I can sip water without stopping but it’s difficult to say exactly how much water you’re drinking. Although I thought I was sipping often enough, it turned out that it wasn’t a lot anyway, I had one liter in the system but I had only drunk 1/3 of it. Not good. The backpack weighs about 9 kg with the stuff I had in it in today (9 kg!! I didn’t even have a spare lens in it, where does the weight come from?) and although it feels good and balanced on my back, it does wear me out after a trip up and down a mountain. But I’ll survive. What are painkillers for anyway?