Tag: jämtlandstriangeln

Hiking trail bucket list

On By Småland OutdoorIn TripsLeave a comment

There are quite a few hiking trails and places that I hope and plan to hike someday. The shorter ones are easier to combine with family life, while others will have to wait until the kids are grown up, or at least until my youngest are old enough to come with me. Anyways, here’s my list. Please comment with your own bucket list. Any advice on more trails are welcome 🙂

Jämtlandstriangeln between the mountain stations Storulvån, Sylarna and Blåhammaren. A 46 km long trail and should take around 3 days to complete. Maybe I’ll be able to get here next year.

Gr 20 in Corsica, known as the toughest long distance  trail in Europe. The 180 km long trail traverses the island north to south across the mountains. From videos I’ve seen it seems to be a pretty tough hike, but the trail is supposed to be well marked. Depending on the speed, it should take somewhere between 9 to 12 days. Cam Honan wrote a quick-guide to this trail recently.

Arctic Circle Trail in Greenland. This 160 km trail goes across Greenland, from Kangerlussuaq to Sisimiut. I had initially planned to hike ACT this summer, but it has been postponed. Hopefully I’ll get there next summer. I’ve planned  two weeks for the hike and traveling back and forth, but the trail itself should take somewhere between 7 to 12 days to complete.

John Muir Trail in Sierra Nevada, California. It’s been described as one of the most beautiful trails in the world. It’s a 338 km long trail and goes through Yosemite National Park, Ansel Adams Wilderness, Sequoia National Park, King’s Canyon National Park and ends at Mount Whitney, the highest point in continental USA. My estimation is that it should take up to three weeks to complete.

Tasmania. I’ve read a couple of trip reports and seen videos from Tasmania, and sometime I’d like to hike here. I don’t have any specific trail in mind, but I’d really like to go here someday and hike for 2 to 3 weeks.

Thru-hiking Kungsleden in northern Sweden. The whole trail is 440 km long, from Hemavan in the south to Abisko in the north. I think it should take somewhere between 2 to 3 weeks to complete the whole trail, and I want to hike it north-bound.

I want to go to Alaska for 2 to 4 weeks, hiking and packrafting. As with Tasmania I don’t have a specific place in mind for now.

Colorado Trail is a 782 km long trail, and an estimation is that it takes 4 to 6 weeks to complete. From blogs and videos it seems to be a beautiful trail.

Gröna- and vita bandet (The green- and white ribbon) from Grövelsjön, 1300 km to Treriksröset along the Scandinavian mountains. The plan is to hike the green ribbon and ski the white ribbon. It should take roughly 3 month each. I’m not overly fond of having to follow certain rules, so I might just do the hiking and skiing without actually applying and getting the ribbon.

Pacific Crest Trail When I found the hiking passion a couple of year ago I also first heard of the Pacific Crest Trail. The 4279 km long trail goes from the US-Mexico border, through California, Oregon and Washington to the US-Canada border. I’ve read several blogs, read Cheryl Strayeds “Wild” and watched countless of YouTube-videos about it, and I really want to get there. I think the hike itself should take somewhere between 4 to 6 months. Of course this will have to wait until my kids are grown up. But PCT is the number one favorite on my bucket list today.

Te Araroa is a relatively new trail, and it wasn’t finished until 2011. The trail is 3000 km long and goes along both the main islands on New Zeeland. 3 to 6 month is the estimated time to complete the trail. As with the PCT this is something that will have to wait a few years.

Please comment and let me know about your favorite hiking trails, that you’d either hiked or want to hike.

Plans for the next year

On By Småland OutdoorIn Trips1 Comment

In a few hours from writing this 2016 will end and 2017 will begin. I’ve never really cared much about New Years Eve as a holiday. For years I’ve been working nights either on New Years Eve or started early the morning after. But I do like to make plans for my life in a year to year basis, and I have started to lay out the plans for my outdoor life in the next year.

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2016 offered stunning views
Plans for 2017

  • I plan to get out on at least one overnight trip every month. I didn’t succeed with this in 2016, but I’ll make another attempt this year. I got better hours on my new job, with no work on weekends, and that will probably make it easier to get away.
  • I want to spend at least 10% of the years nights sleeping outside, under the stars, in a tent, in a lean-to or otherwise out in nature. That’s 36 night, and shouldn’t be impossible to do.
  • Travel to Greenland and hike the Arctic Circle Trail. The planning is nearly done, and I’ve done some gear purchases, put away money for the plane tickets and notified my boss about vacation for the planned weeks.
  • Lots of day hikes with my youngest daughter since I’ll be home from work with her quite a lot up until August when she’ll start to go to kindergarten.
  • I’ll start with some more advanced, yet lightweight, outdoor cooking this year. I’m getting tired of eating the same freezer bag meals as always, and it will be fun to expand the culinary experience.
  • Buy a canoe and have overnight canoetrips on both Helgasjön and Åsnen. Åsnen is the second largest lake in Småland, and parts of it will most likely be transformed to a National park in the near future. This goal however is depending on whether I can afford to spend that much money or not.
    kichisaga-topp-1
    I got my eye set on this beauty
  • Work on getting a hiking trail around Helgasjön. I’ve been in contact with the local authorities and it’s been up for discussion, but they won’t fund it right now. But I know there are more hikers around Växjö who’d like a trail there, and I’ll try to get more people to push for it.
  • Make the blog more active and write at least once a week, preferably two times a week.
  • Start making movies of my hikes and movies with gear reviews.
  • This year I also want to seriously start planning for a shift in my life, with more passive income than today, and find ways to cut down on office time and maybe find a way to make an income from my outdoor interest. I have both Angeliqa Mejstedt from Vandringsbloggen and Philip Werner from sectionhiker.com as role models. Both of them have a larger outdoor experience than me and have a really large number of readers, but you got to start somewhere 🙂

These are the plans I have now for the next year. Some will be easier to succeed with than others but in general, I’ll try to spend more time in the outdoors and focus more actively on finding alternative ways to make an income. In a year or so I’ll summarize how well I did in reaching my goals.

Happy new year everyone. Let’s make it a great one!