The Quiet Picture

I’m back at home now, had a relaxing day at work – meaning, I didn’t have to use my feet much. Coffee machine and back! I did two small hikes yesterday which puts my four day total to exactly 50 km of hiking, and I could easily go for another hike now. The only thing that is making me tired is the mosquito that kept me awake the other night, I tried to kill it but every time I switched on the light, the bug would sit still and I couldn’t find it. A male mosquito obviously because it didn’t bite me, but the noise it makes just keeps the stress hormones going and thus no sleep. But enough about the mosquitoes!

The first small hike I did yesterday was to the Svalåkläppen fell off Bruksvallarna. A very easy peak to reach from Rockvallen and then you get to eat a waffle at the Kariknallen cabin, even if their waffles are not as good as those server at Djupdalsvallen. But then again, the waffles at Djupdalsvallen are the best, period! Maybe I’ll get there in September before they close for the season…

As I was driving home and the clouds were still not clearing much, I suddenly had an idea that I should visit the Rändåfallet waterfall in Långå. I’ve been there only once before and it was years and years ago when I was shooting film. The falls are very easy to reach and they are quite nice so it was about time I paid another visit. Since there isn’t any abundance of information about the falls on the Internet, I will write another blog entry about them later – for now, just a picture that shows a small detail of the falls.

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I’ve reprocessed some of the pictures I’ve posted here in the past days. If you’re a regular reader, clear your browser cache and re-visit Thursday‘s (first picture updated) and Friday‘s posts (all pictures updated). I’ve re-done the stitched panorama in Friday’s post, I used an adjustment brush to “fade” the tree that was cut off in the frame. It’s still cut off, obviously, but I hope it’s not as distracting as it was before.

I also realised something about the Tvärån falls from Thursday. I was already speculating when I was there that I took a wrong turn and didn’t end up quite where I was supposed to end up. The thing was that as I was following the trail up the creek, there was a brook that came from the side. I was almost sure that I should’ve crossed the side brook, but there was no way I could’ve gotten across without getting my feet wet. It was too wide to jump over and too deep to wade over (without taking off my boots). And the trail that continued over on the other side was much weaker than the trail that turned to follow the side brook, thus I decided to follow the better trail. Had I had the instructions with me (forgot them in the car with the map), I would’ve taken off my boots and waded across the water, because that was the right trail to take! So now I’ve missed what presumably is the best waterfall in Tvärån, very annoying to have done all that hiking and miss the target. Which means that I will have to get back there one day, long and boring hike or not!

Today’s hike was to the Ösjöstugan cabin and then over to the peaks of Ösjövålen and Osjökläppen. It’s a long-ish hike so I wanted to make it a bit easier by taking the ski lift up from Ramundberget up to the plateau, which meant that it was fairly level hiking to the Ösjön cabins. After that, the trail goes up and when I got to the pass, I had Ösjökläppen on my left and Ösjövålen on the right. Both are low peaks so I didn’t have to put much effort on reaching them from the pass, as you can see from the picture (both peaks are there and the pass in the middle, and you can just barely see the cabins as well, the trail is pointing the way).

Ösjökläppen turned out to be interesting. There was this barren streak going down the mountain, just about the only plant growing in the streak was the alpine catchfly (Lychnis alpina). But then, there were loads of them. Never seen anything like it. A bit higher up I came across some rock piles and holes that were filled with water now. And then it hit me – copper. The alpine catchfly loves copper, which means that there is a very high concentration of copper here. No other plants survive. But outside this barren streak, it was life as normal.

If the plant life was normal, I found it very strange how many fallen reindeer antlers I was seeing. You’d think that there are antlers everywhere in the mountains, but it’s not at all like that. It’s quite rare that you see any and on this hike, I found 11 and they were all on these two mountains, within a distance of about 1.5-2 km. That’s probably more fallen antlers than I have ever seen before, all put together!

On the way back I stopped at the Ösjöstugan cabin. I had read about a natural well close to the cabin and I must say it’s the most special well I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen natural wells before, but I haven’t actually seen how the water flows up. But here, the water was just bubbling up (without creating any bubbles but I don’t know how to otherwise describe it) and the water was absolutely clear. I drank it and it didn’t taste like anything. I mean, there was really no taste in the water! Pure as it gets.

All that remained was the hike back to the car. When I was going down the hill to Ramundberget and my car, I was glad I had taken the lift up. The hike was over 16 km and although I wasn’t tired as such, I was still hoping that the evening would be cloudy so I didn’t have to drag myself out to shoot the light. It’s almost time for sunset now as I’m typing this… and it looks like rain!

Today was going to be the rainiest day of the vacation but it didn’t bother me in the least because I can rain-proof both myself and the camera. And I knew exactly what I was going to shoot today, as well – waterfalls. There just isn’t any better motif for a rainy day than waterfalls. I love the exposed wet rocks surrounding the waterfall, you can do wonders with the polarising filter. Dry rocks on the other hand, it doesn’t matter how much you rotate the filter but they’ll still be dull.

A few years ago I visited a place called Silverfallet off Skärkdalen (a few km north from Flatruet) but I wasn’t impressed. I found the falls to be un-photogenic and all but forgot about them until this trip when I knew I would be having some rain and needed waterfalls to shoot. So today as I as hiking up along the falls… all I could think about was that I must’ve been having a bad day back then, because now I found them absolutely gorgeous! It’s a 2.5 km hike along a very wet and muddy trail (it’s like that even when it hasn’t been raining) until you get to the Öjönån creek, there’s a bridge across and then the trail follows the falls up to where they level out near the Öjön lake. It’s 1 km there – and it’s just one exciting fall after another during the whole distance. Some of them are harder to photograph than others, but considering how many of them there are, you still have plenty to shoot! So why would I ever have thought that this was not a good place? Well, it was early summer when I was there. Too much water – I don’t like it when the volume is high. You lose the definition and detail. And secondly, it was a sunny day. I can’t deal with waterfalls and sunlight.

There is quite a lot of marshland on the way to the falls. I’ve been here before to shoot orchids, but it’s always been early July. Now in late July I could see that this was an even better place for orchids that I had thought. Most of them had withered already of course, but the fragrant orchids were still colourful. Also found twayblade in bloom and some late blooming heath spotted orchids. And the withered ones… early marsh orchid ssp. cruenta. Lapland marsh orchid. And I even found a lesser twayblade! I was just simply amazed by the abundance of them. Two weeks ago, it must’ve looked amazing! Easily beats Hamrafjället and Mittåkläppen which are normally touted as the première flower locations. Of course it’s not all about orchids, but in my mind, I always start with orchids and the rest is bonus.

Silverfallet turned out to be ten times better than Tvärån that I did yesterday, with only half the trouble. Faster to get there and nicer to be there!

Since this was a relatively short hike, I did a small promenade in the evening. I followed the Mittån creek upstream, I knew there wouldn’t be any major falls but some whitewater anyway. I got to this place which I thought could be something…. I stood there for a long time, trying to figure out how to do it. I couldn’t think of anything so I continued walking and didn’t really find anything interesting along the way. On the way back, I was determined to try the spot anyway. I set up the tripod and camera and tried and tried… but I just couldn’t make it happen. Until suddenly this semi-abstract materialised in the viewfinder! Persistence paid off.

I have another mini-holiday this weekend. And there’s only really one place where I can spend it – the mountains.

Today’s hike was at Ramundberget. I’ve read about the waterfalls of Tvärån and because the day was going to be overcast, waterfalls were just the right thing to shoot. Problem is… the waterfalls weren’t as photogenic as I had hoped for. However, I was impressed by the surroundings, especially up towards the tree line. Another place which will look just simply spectacular in autumn colours! But it’s a long hike there, 5 km just to get from the car to creek and then about 2 km upstream. The waterfalls are bigger downstream but it’s difficult to find a good angle, maybe it will be easier in the autumn where the insects aren’t quite as numerous. They can be a real inspiration killer!

And to be honest, the waterfalls further up were a little bit less exciting. It’s clear that the volume of water is very low at the moment, but I’m not sure if more water would help. But I wasn’t disappointed as such, I was just so happy to be there. Always. Hiking up to the alpine tundra cheers me up like nothing else!

And while I was up there, I also got a close view of Skarsfjället. It’s an impressive mountain at over 1500m, the highest peak of the massif is bit like a round-sided pyramid which is easy to recognise. Because it’s the highest mountain in the neighbourhood, it means it’s visible from a lot of places around here. When it’s visible at all – it seems like has its own climate and the peak is often hidden in the clouds. But not today, even if it was a bit of an overcast and dull day.

So what did I forget then? I forgot the macro lens and compass at home. I forgot the map in the car. I forgot to check the reserve batteries for the GPS (which I wanted to keep operational when I don’t have a compass and a map!). It turned out that the spare battery holder I grabbed when I left home contained used batteries which I obviously had forgotten to throw away back when the batteries were used! But no harm done, there was just enough juice to keep the GPS powered up so I could see when I was back at the car that I had hiked over 15 km. Not bad… but I think I will do a shorter hike tomorrow!

But most importantly… I forget all my worries!

I finally had some holidays, if three busy days can be counted as such. But they were busy in the good way so I don’t mind! My sister came for a visit and there’s really nothing I want to show her around home so we headed to the mountains.

On Thursday we hiked up to the Kariknallen café above Bruksvallen for the obligatory waffle (yes, regular readers will have noticed my affection for the waffles) and then continued up to the Beritkläppen peak. The views were great just as you’d expect, but I was out of luck with the weather. A perfect weather for hiking is not a perfect weather for photography, but to be honest it didn’t really matter! It was just so nice to spend some time with my sister again.

Since my sister is interested in history and culture, I figured that she’d really enjoy a visit to Röros. I was right – the only disappointment was that the famous church of theirs was closed for renovation. But she got quickly over it as we were wandering around and admiring the old buildings. On the way back to Sweden I wanted to stop at Brekken and find a waterfall that I heard of a few years ago. It has taken me a long time to figure out exactly where the waterfall is and how to get there and now I finally got to see the place – and it was gorgeous. I’m telling you, it’s a real stunner! The light was a problem once again but imagine this same scene in autumn colours and soft light. I have a week’s vacation in September and I’ll be coming back here, no doubt about it!

Since this trip wasn’t about photography, I only had the 24-105mm zoom lens with me because I didn’t think I’d do any flowers this time. But when I came across these jacob’s ladder (Polemonium caeruleum) flowers in Mittådalen, it was a relief to see that the zoom lens was sufficient. It’s the first time I’ve seen the flower in the wild but that beautiful blue colour caught my eye immediately!

On Saturday it was already time to turn home. Our last hike was in the Rogen nature reserve. The lakes in Rogen are amazing, just check it out on a map and you’ll understand what I mean. I wanted to see if it was possible to get an aerial view from one of the surrounding peaks so we got up on the Handskinnsvålen fell off Käringsjön. While the landscape was amazing to see, the view over the lakes didn’t quite live up to my expectations but once again I didn’t mind. It was a great hike and who cares about the über-dull light when there’s wolf lichen to be admired? Rogen is one of the few remaining strongholds for this rare lichen.

All that remained then was the way home (we got to see a herd of hundreds of reindeer to my sister’s delight). But I’ll just say this… my sister ain’t no photographer. It turned out that her memory card was filled with pictures from the past year and the only way she could snap any new pictures was by going over the old ones and deleting something else. Which is not an ideal way to photograph any animate subjects such as the reindeer!

Had a busy day yesterday. Busy in a good way – one day trip to the mountains, I was in desperate need of a break. The last time I had any vacation was September! Of course, we can debate how relaxing it is to drive hundreds of km in a day and hike up and down two mountains… but I’ll much rather have a tired body than a tired brain.

Anyway, I started with Stor-Mittåkläppen. There’s a special flower I knew might be growing there, it’s the glacier buttercup (Ranunculus glacialis), however I had no confirmed reports about it but I had to start from somewhere. This flower likes the tough conditions next to snowfields and there’s one on Mittåkläppen that doesn’t melt until later in the summer. When I got to the foot of the mountain, I saw a herd of reindeer gracing above and below the snowfield. There were a couple of hikers ahead of me and the reindeer didn’t like them (reindeer are not wild animals as such, just extremely shy of people) and ran off, so all I had to do was to avoid the reindeer droppings on my way up to the snow. Very soon after I arrived at the snowfield, I found some leaves which I thought would be the glacier buttercup. To be honest, I’m still not 100% if I’m right, I’ve compared my picture with four different sources and sometimes the leaves match and sometimes not. But it’s gotta be a buttercup of some sort, not that it helps. In any case, it wasn’t flowering yet so the question is if I can go back there in about two weeks to confirm the species. Oh well, it took me 4-5 efforts to find the alpine chamorchis so I can’t expect to find the glacier buttercup so quickly!

It was a warm day and initially it was overcast so it didn’t look promising for photography. When I arrived at the peak of the mountain, the sky had cleared enough for the sun to shine and it got hot. Wind normally brings some relief and today the wind was heavy, but it was the warmest wind I’ve ever experienced on a mountaintop. Strange experience. But at least it kept the mosquitoes at bay!

When I came back from the mountain, I had a waffle at Djupdalsvallen. They are so incredibly good there, there’s probably a few thousand calories in one but who cares! I really recommend it, not just for the waffle but the whole experience of hiking up this special mountain and then having a coffee in the beautiful surroundings.

By now it was mid-afternoon. I drove to Messlingen to check out the Mittån delta where the creek runs into the lake Messlingen. It should be a botanically interesting place but I would disagree, I reckon you’d need to be interested in grasses and half-grasses to find anything exciting there. So after walking around for a while, I took the trail up towards Kappruskaftet because I wanted to see if I could get a view down to the Anådalen valley from there. I didn’t find the view of the valley (or maybe I didn’t walk far enough) but the landscape was otherwise interesting. Kappruskaftet isn’t high enough for alpine tundra even if it looks like at first. So it’s a bit strange seeing all these big old pines there, some of them growing all alone on the borders of the big marshland.

When I got back to the car, it was past 7pm and all I’ve had to eat all day was one small sandwhich, energy bar and a waffle. I calculated that I had hiked about 15 km up and down mountains, so I was hungry – I was halfway home when I finally could stop eating, LOL!

I came home after 11pm and it seems like the day had been even warmer here because it was still 21 degrees. But today it will be raining, which is just as well – I think I will do nothing today. Watching a movie sounds like the kind of activity I want to take on!

I like hiking light. Dragging a whole lot of photography gear is just not my thing, because I want to enjoy the hike as well. So I have a big dilemma when I have to choose the gear for mountain hikes because I want to be able shoot both flowers and landscapes. And since the 150mm macro is not much of a landscape lens, I needed a way to transform the 24-105mm zoom into a macro. Answer: extension tubes. Since I’ve never tried this combo, I had no idea if it really works or not but the proof is in the pudding so today I tested it on some wood anemone buds I found. The idea is not to compare the 150mm macro to the zoom with extension tube, but just to see if the zoom kit can be used for flower close-ups at all. It turned out it works fine! Problem solved, I now have my light-weight photography kit for the long day hikes. The irony is that two of the components in the kit are the oldest pieces of photography equipment I have, the monopod which I got in the very beginning when I started with photography (except I’ve switched the ballhead) and the extension tube set which also dates back in the early days before I got a dedicated macro lens.

At this time of the year I do the same walk every weekend, kind of an inventory round to see when the flowers will start popping up. The wood anemone above was shot at hembygdsgården because there’s still about 20cm of snow in my favourite wood anemone spot. Another flower that’s about to bloom is the daphne, I have high hopes of seeing some flowers next weekend because the buds are getting quite big in my favourite daphne spot. I didn’t expect to see any open daphne flowers so imagine my surprise when I came across these pink beauties with their amazing scent when I was inspecting the Svartån waterfalls today. There was too much water in the creek to inspire me (small creeks work better for me when there’s little water in them) so finding the daphne was perfect. But regardless of the amount of water, it was great to be out there. The wind was horribly cold and completely negated the warm sunshine, it was even snowing at one point, but it didn’t stop me from sitting down and enjoying a cup of coffee (or two) and be happy about the changing season!

Easter is a classic time for a skiing (or snowshoeing) trip in the mountains. The sunny fifth season days really are the best up in the mountains so I have a tradition to do a trip every year, normally I pick any sunny Saturday in March or very early April but with Easter giving us extra days off, it’s perfect.

There’s plenty of daylight at this time of the year so I was in no hurry to get to Messlingen. Just as well because the road from Hede to Messlingen was in a bad shape, no mud pits as yet where the car would get stuck (give it a week or two and those mud pits will be there), but so wet that my car quickly changed colour from green to mud. So glad I just washed it…

The trip plan I had for the day was to take the trail that passes behind my cabin and follow it up to the alpine tundra. I hiked up there last year but the weather was horrible, it was a downright snowstorm so not a chance to see any scenery. This is now going to be my “home away from home” so I was curious to see what it really looked like!

When I got up to the forest line, I found a perfect place for a break. Or rather, everybody and their dog had found the place before me so I just followed the tracks, but luckily when I got there the crowds had already left. It’s a small valley-like depression that provides protection from the wind and because it faces south, it’s just perfect. In Swedish they’re called “snögrop”, snow pits. It means that you tramp the snow to form a seating place where you can enjoy your coffee in the warm sunshine with beautiful scenery around you, awesome! Except of course I wanted to maximise the scenery part of this deal so I made my snögrop higher up on the slope, which means that I didn’t get full protection from the wind which means that it wasn’t quite as pleasant to sit there as it would’ve been otherwise but nevermind… it was awesome!

Before I was completely freezing from sitting down in the wind, I got back up on the trail. The alpine tundra was just as magnificent as I had imaged it with wide open spaces with snow and mountains as far as the eye could reach. And then when I followed the trail up to the Öster-Stoljan peak, it only got better. How about a 360 degree mountain panorama? It could be done here. I didn’t feel like trying a hand-held 360 panorama though so I settled for a couple of smaller views. The one below is looking towards west.

There’s just one problem with admiring this landscape. It was cold. Really, really cold. I was appropriately dressed for the weather, but when you get up on these peaks the wind is relentless. And this wasn’t even a bad wind!

Öster-Stoljan seems to be a very popular place. Understandable, because it’s one of the closest peaks from Messlingen and very easy to reach. At one point I was seeing so many snow mobiles up there that I thought they had a convention. Judging by all the tracks, I was the only one who got there by foot… Good for me.

When I got back to the car, it was already 6pm so the light was nice. My plan was to take the road to Funäsdalen (no way was I going to take the muddy road back to Hede!) because there would be quite a few opportunities for catching the evening light. And just when I found my opportunity, the light faded. Some thin clouds in the west, just enough to obscure the sun so that the glorious warm sunshine was transformed to blah during the time it took me to walk from the car to my subject, because it figures that there’s no way to park right next to it.

But no complaining. This tradition of mine, it will most definitely continue!

If you look at the world map, you won’t see any white space anymore – we (humans) have been everywhere. The time of the great explorers is now but an exciting story in a book. What is left is personal discovery – just because some other people have been there before, doesn’t mean that it’s not worth for me to see. Up here in my neck of the woods everything is in smaller scale of course, I gravely doubt we any had any explorers here at all. Only the early settlers who endured the harsh environment and made a living out of the forest.

So today I was, if not an explorer, then a re-explorer anyway. We found a place which didn’t look like it’s been visited by humans in many years. Plenty of traces of log driving activity, but when the trucks took over the log piles the people deserted these waterways. The only tracks we found belonged to moose and a bear.

It was a difficult day for photography, so all I have is a few pictures for memories. But a poor day for photography was a great day for discovery!

I shouldn’t have complained about the light yesterday. Today was worse. And the wind was bad, too. Just the dullest circumstances possible for photographing the autumn colours, but I tried. Just needed to avoid having sky in the composition, or large areas of water. But one thing that works fine on days like these is  long shutter speeds. So on with the polariser and ND64 and watch the 20 sec exposures smooth our those nasty wind movement details!

Today I found a new route for my local hikes in Loos. There’s a new road which provides me with a shortcut to Österhocklan east from the Eagle Mountain, I used the route already late last winter actually but I had no idea that it was passable during the other seasons. The road ends kinda in the middle of nowhere, but then you just have to cross over to the snowmobile trail, the trail is not all pleasant to walk on but it’s only a few hundred meters before you reach the bridge over the creek. And by bridge I mean the new bridge which is very solid under the foot, not this old bridge which has finally given in and split in two. And after that, you can take the road which leads back home via Loossjön. A nice 9 km trip in all, took me 4 hours today but it did include quite a few photo stops despite the less-than-photographic weather.

The best part of the whole thing was that I found a new tarn, it’s very close to the road but it’s kinda hidden behind a small hill so it’s not visible from the road. It was a total surprise, it felt like an oasis of wilderness with dead trees lining up the little lake and then forest all around that almost looked natural (=no obvious signs of logging). I’ll be back, light permitting!