Camp at Hukejaure
Woke up early on August 18th, knowing that I only had about 4km to go to reach Hukejaure cabin, I looked forward to a few cups of coffee in the tent before slowly making my way. Coming out of the tent at a quarter to seven I looked to the east and saw a sky dark as Mordor… Immediately I decided for coffee at the cabin instead, got everything packed nice and dry, and arrived at Hukejaure shortly after 8:15 without having been hit by rain yet.
It didn’t take long, though, and it was pouring down. One heavy shower chasing another, and that’s how the day went down. In a break between showers, I went out and made camp in my usual place, the rest of the day went reading, chopping wood, cleaning up (unfortunately STF has forbidden heating up the sauna, so now it’s just a washroom) and socializing with the few other hikers there. It was good to have an easy day and I tried to get some extra snacks to compensate for the day before!
I got to bed pretty early and as always slept amazingly well on that hill behind the cabin. We had some rain during the night, yet nothing serious.
Still, I broke my camp right upon waking and hung the tent to dry inside, which turned out to be a good move. The sky that had looked rather friendly in the early morning and, ironically enough, I said to Freddy, the cabin host, that the weather was so much more promising than the last few days, soon grew darker and shortly it started raining heavily. The rain continued more or less constantly until 18:30, and by then I’d already accepted that I wouldn’t go anywhere that day. It’s a good thing that I never plan for rest days during these longer tours, as there’s always natural opportunities coming up! Anyways, I decided to make a cool thing out of the situation and try a night in the Kåta that belongs to Hukejaure cabin.
All these tours up here in Lapland and I never before slept inside one of these traditional structures! The day itself was ridiculously slow as the weather was seriously gruesome, lots of reading, quite some meditation, bringing the Kåta into shape for an overnight stay, and not much else. Still, it went by pretty fast and I can tell that my body was pretty happy about the extra rest! And, there are definitely worse places to spend a day pinned down by bad weather than one of my top three cabins in the area!
