Long-distance hiking in Sarek National Park – tips and tricks

Transa’s Noah and his girlfriend Lotta went for a two-week hike away from any civilisation. Here, Noah tells us what they took into account.

Getting to Sweden

We travelled there and back by train. It took about 60 hours each way. From Zurich we took the night train to Hamburg. From there we wanted to go straight to Boden in Sweden and on to Murjek. We missed our reserved night train on this route as Deutsche Bahn was delayed. The alternative was a night train from Malmö to Stockholm, which was fully booked. The conductor gave us a sleeping compartment with two beds, shower and toilet – when we had actually only reserved seats. This was a real highlight on the outward journey. In Murjek, we had to spend the night in a tent. From there, we continued by bus to Kvikkjokk, the starting point of our tour. We came back the same way.

Equipment tips for long-distance hiking in Sarek National Park

No huts, no infrastructure. I’ve been fascinated by Sarek National Park for years. Talking to other Transa employees has somewhat relativised the real wilderness for me, but it was still essential to spend a good amount of time preparing. Because there is only one hut in the entire national park and you can only use it for emergencies, we planned the tour with a two-person tent.

Overall, we decided to go hiking with very light equipment and used small backpacks, each with a volume of 55 litres. For shoes, we deliberately opted for lighter trail running shoes – with the result that our feet were always wet. However, they are light, comfortable and dry quickly. We’d do it again, you get wet anyway.

Route planning and orientation without trail markings

During the planning stage, I had done a lot of research on the internet, studied maps and Claes Grundsten’s hiking guide. The author has already hiked all the valleys there and describes quite accurately where you can cross rivers, for example. The special thing about Sarek National Park is that there are some trails, but officially there are hardly any hiking trails. There is no long-distance hiking trail. We often had to hike through tall shrubs, marshes and boulder fields, which made it very difficult to make progress. To navigate, we used a compass and a map. This is very feasible, as there are lots of striking mountain peaks and rock formations to guide you. In addition, you often hike in narrow valleys where it is clear where you have to go. The orientation was only very difficult when it was foggy and we were in open terrain on high plains. For these cases, we used an offline map on our mobile phone – because you never have mobile phone reception there. In case of an absolute emergency, we had a satellite communication device (Garmin inReach) with us.

Food and drink

Oats, freeze-dried berries, linseed, chia seeds and hot water on top: we always made our own porridge for breakfast. Over the course of the day, each person had 100 to 200 grams of nuts and two energy bars, and freeze-dried food from Trek’n’Eat for lunch and dinner. We ate our way through the range. Trek’n’ Eat’s meals are varied and proved to be very substantial. We packed food for 14 days. It went well in the end, on the last day we ate the rest of the nuts. There is plenty of water there and we drank straight from the rivers. We chose not to bring a water filter. The water quality of the rivers is really good.. Dort haben wir uns einmal durchs Sortiment probiert. Die Mahlzeiten von Trek’n’ Eat sind abwechslungsreich und haben sich als sehr reichhaltig erwiesen. Essen haben wir für 14 Tage eingepackt. Es ging am Ende gut auf, am letzten Tag haben wir noch den Rest an Nüssen gegessen. Wasser gibt es vor Ort Unmengen und wir haben direkt aus den Flüssen getrunken. Auf einen Wasserfilter haben wir verzichtet. Die Wasserqualität der Fliessgewässer ist wirklich gut.

Health, hygiene and safety during long-distance hiking

We washed as seldom as possible, as the water was just too cold. We just accepted that we would stink. We had a shovel to bury our waste, and we burned the toilet paper. This is only the second best solution, but we didn’t want to carry our toilet paper with us for 14 days. Afterwards, we heard about a Closomat that you can use to wash your butt with water. We want to try that out next time. Of course, feminine hygiene also needed considering when preparing for the trip: Lotta got her period right at the end of the hike. She used a menstrual cup. This is a small, reusable cup made of medical-grade silicone that collects the blood. The small container is emptied after a few hours, or as needed, rinsed and sterilised regularly in boiling water for three to five minutes. A first aid kit is a must on tours like this.

Encounters with people & animals 

We saw neither elks nor bears, but we did see lots of reindeer. However, they’re not wild, but belong to the ‘Saami’, the indigenous people of northern Scandinavia. We rarely encountered people, except for on the Kungsleden long-distance hiking trail. We would have spent two days on this trail, but we had made good time and were able to leave the trail quickly to hike in the backcountry.

Weather

There is the least rainfall in this area in August and September. Because of the mountains, however, it is almost always cloudy, and overall it just rains often. We were able to get the weather forecast daily with our satellite device and were very lucky: there were only two really bad days were with a lot of rain and fog, otherwise we had a lot of sunshine and beautiful sunrises and sunsets. There was only strong wind on one day – I have heard of people having completely different experiences before.