Cabin Host Series – Vakkotavare 2017

Every cabin that is served by the Swedish Tourist Organization (STF) is hosted by one or more mountain cabin hosts working as volunteers to make you visit both safer and more pleasurable.
The series introduces you to some of these “heroes of the mountains”!
Meet Anders and Birgitta in Vakkotavare:

The journey continues, please leave a comment to tell me what You think and share this with friends and loved ones who might benefit or be interested!

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Peace // Claes

Day 1 – July 28th 2017

Woke up early at home and had my regular fat coffee (about 1 tbs each of butter, coconut oil and MCT oil mixed into a cup of coffee), did my reading and started splitting the gear into two bags. Tent, gear shed and most of the food went into a big plastic bag and got secured with duct tape. I took the valuable stuff (camera, electronics etc) as carry on in the lid of the backpack.
Although everything was in one place to start with I barely made it through a quick shower before the airport coach was outside to pick me up.
Check in and security went really smooth, after passing I still had an hour before departure and went for a couple of hamburger patties.

Flight was soft, just under 1.5 hours and I even had a great Sit (that’s what we call our daily meditation session in the MKE) while in the air. As we landed on time I knew I would make it time wise doing my last shopping (gas for the stove) in Kiruna and could continue according to plan ‘A’. Take the train to Katterat and start from there!

Picking up my luggage I found that they apparently weren’t that gentle handling luggage, one container with ghee had been hit slightly ajar and some of the fat had leaked out in the food bag.
Thankfully I noticed this while waiting for the train to depart from Kiruna and I had time to clean it up decently.
Still, putting up a ‘note to self’ to secure food containers with tape inthe future, isn’t it great how we always can choose to learn something instead of being an upset victim?!

After just over 2 hours of train ride we arrived in Katterat at 17:10 (that’s 5:10PM for you Americans) and I started down the gravel road leading up to the damm right next to ‘Hunddalshytta’ (“Dog Valley cabin’ in Norwegian).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The gravel road presented for the most part a slight uphill slope, every now and then leveling out yet slowly climbing almost 300m (1000ft) of elevation. Walking a road is always easy on the legs and it was a good way to start after the rather lengthy travel.Still I was more than pleased reaching the end of the road and getting onto the trail after an easy river crossing.

Continuing uphill towards the pass I couldn’t do last year due to weather conditions, I stopped after a total of three hours to raise the tent and get a timely dinner.
Finding a wonderfully soft spot with perfect view into Hunddalen was just too inviting to continue on.

 

 

Even though I motored along rather well I could feel I was not in ketosis and I need to get quite some fat with my dinner.
I really look forward to try the PhatFibre for the first time tomorrow morning.

 

The backpack is clearly too heavy to be carried comfortably and I even had thoughts about leaving stuff in a depot to come back to later. Funny how easy it sometimes is to forget all the times I already done the same thing successfully that now seems hard to do. I’m so grateful how I nowadays catch my undesirable thoughts almost immediately and can focus on enjoying the scenery instead. Nature here is just breathtakingly beautiful!!!

The journey continues, please leave a comment to tell me what You think and share this with friends and loved ones who might benefit or be interested!

By leaving Your name and email in the box below You get notification of futures posts and news!

Peace // Claes