I haven’t been out camping a lot this year, and the last overnighter I had was in September.
I’ve been longing for the outdoors, but things have come in the way.
Last weekend I finally got out again, on a short overnight trip with C. She too had been longing for some time in a tent, and it was nice to get out together.
It’s became a rather sudden decision, so when we finally got out to our “secret” spot north of Växjö it was already dark. But the sun do set early in the winter up north.
C had fallen asleep in the car, so I set up camp before I woke her up. I had decided to film this trip, and the darkness provided some difficulties to the filming. But filming in the warm light of a candle light or a storm lantern gave its own feeling to the shots.
With darkness already upon us, and a cold windy weather C and I stayed in the warm tent.
With trial and error I’ve finally seemed to have managed how to keep the stove relatively warm for a long period without using up too mush wood.
We made a dinner of fried vegetable , pepper steaks and rice. Sort of out usual dinner while hot tent camping. But it is delicious.
After dinner C kept playing with pine cones. “Mommy pine cone and baby pine cone” She also “found a map” in the magic red light of her head lamp. It was a map of England and Beach Land, that she studied in the red light against the tipi wall.
We had Christmas porridge (rice porridge) before we went to bed.
I used the Exped Synmat Duo UL LW this time too, and I truly love it. It is such an improvement to my sleep. It’s super comfortable, and C always crawled up on my sleeping pad before. This way we can share a 130x200cm pad with lots of room. For camping with a kid this is really an awesome piece of gear.
For other gear I also used my Frost River Isle Royale Jr pack. For hiking I’m a light weight backpacker, but I do love traditional canvas- and leather gear, and for car- and canoe camping like this, I prefer them.
I had aligned the sleeping pad in a different angle than I use to, so when I woke up the next morning I first had trouble figuring out where the door was in my sleep drunken state.
I had chopped up small pieces of firewood last night to quickly get a hot fire burning. We then fried some breads for breakfast that we ate with salamis and cheeses.
C didn’t want to go home, but unfortunately it was time to go home after breakfast. We stayed in the tent while the stove cooled down, and packed down the rest of the gear.
As usual we had a nice time camping. There is less hiking nowadays, but I love camping with C. She longs for the canoe again, and so do I. I can’t wait to get out on a canoe camping trip with her again.
The video from the trip is up on YouTube. Both filming in the dark and filming with a tree year old was challenging. But I’ll try to film more this year. The editing is still rudimentary, but hopefully it’ll improve the more I do it.
I really hadn’t planned to get out last weekend, and at first I didn’t really feel like it. But my wife needed to study and wanted the house to be a bit calmer, so she asked me if I wanted to take C on a camping trip.
C was excited to get out in the woods again, since it’s been two months since she spent a night outdoors.
I had decided to go to Tolgasjön again, to the “secret” spot that I had discovered a couple of weeks earlier.
I packed up the car with a bag of firewood, my canvas tipi – the Tentipi Safir 5, a backpack with the sleeping gear and other stuff and my duffel bag with the stove and the cooking gear. I go all in on luxury on trips like these.
We stopped by the store on the way and bought snacks and ingredients for our dinner. Then we set off toward the camp site. C fell asleep in the car, and I carried the gear out to the peninsula and set up the tent before I woke her up. When I was back at the car to get her two cars slowly passed us, and we waved to them. One of the cars had a brand name on them, and I think it might have been the land owner. I hope they don’t put up a gate at the beginning of the road but let us still have access to this place.
When they had passed we walked out to the end of the peninsula together. C made herself comfortable inside the tipi while I chopped up some wood and made some feather sticks. We loaded the stove with fire wood and quickly got a hot fire going.
Temperatures outside the tent was below freezing, but it didn’t take long for us to get sweaty, and we had to remove layer after layer.
C barely wanted to leave the tent, but just wanted to stay inside the cozy warm tent, play and eat snacks. So that’s what we did for most of the afternoon and evening.
When it was time for dinner I boiled potatoes in the pot and made reindeer stew in the frying pan. We ate it in flat bread rolls. This time I remembered to bring the lingonberry jam. It tasted delicious.
The rest of the evening we just played and relaxed in the tent, before it was time for her to sleep.
She fell asleep pretty quickly, and I spent a couple of hours reading and watching Netflix.
I slept pretty good, and C just woke up once to go out to pee. I woke up a couple of time, and listened to the sound of snow falling on the tipi.
The next morning C woke me up, and wanted us to get up and make some breakfast. I didn’t want to leave the warm sleeping bag, but I got up and quickly made a fire with the pre chopped small pieces of wood I had.
The skies where covered in clouds at first, but after a breakfast of fried pita breads with cheese and salamis, we got out again. This time the sun had come out, and it was really beautiful outside.
C didn’t want to get back home, and neither did I. The weather was perfect, with snow, sun and a couple of degrees below freezing. But we had other obligations so we had couldn’t stay too long. While we waited for the stove to cool down I packed up the rest of the gear.
When the stove was cold enough we packed it down, packed down the tent and headed back home. Once again it had been a short overnighter, but a great time outside. I got one more week at work before I got four weeks of parental leave. I’m planning on spending a lot of the following weeks outside with my little rug rat.
Last weekend I was out camping with both my daughters. It was the first time I tried hot tent camping, and while the gear was very heavy, I really liked the comfort. For car camping trips, where weight isn’t an issue, it’s perfect.
it turned out that my wife was going to have a girls night at home with a few old colleagues the weekend after, so I was exiled this weekend too. My son was away, my oldest daughter was at her friends place, so the only one joining me this time was C.
We drove to the same place this weekend too, as it’s a great place and pretty close to home.
A couple of cars where already there when we arrived, and though we could hear kids in the distance, we didn’t see anyone. I set up the tipi on the same place as last time, set up the camp and started a fire in the stove. After a short while two families with baskets full of mushrooms passed our camp. They where only day-hiking, and left shortly after.
We started with lunch, and I fried pepper steak, red onions and bell peppers, and had Mediterranean rice to that. It was delicious.
We spent the rest of the afternoon chillin’ in the tipi or exploring the area around camp. We searched for mushrooms. Either chanterelles or Boletus edulis, the only eatable mushrooms I can identify without risk. A fun fact about the Boletus edulis is that in Sweden is mostly knows as Karl Johan mushroom, after the Swedish king (a former french officer) who brought his french habits, and introduced the mushroom to the Swedish kitchen.
We didn’t find any mushrooms that we where looking for, but we did explore the forest, while we both chanted: “Karl Johan, where are you? Come out so we can eat you!”
In the evening we made dinner. C had decided that we where going to have burgers for dinner, so that’s what I fried up. We made pretty simple burgers. Buns, meat, sauce and cheddar. But it tasted great. We just hung out in the tent for the evening, before it was time to put C to sleep.
I stuffed the stove full of firewood, and closed the vent to get a slow burn. It stayed hot for a long time.
But the night was pretty awful though. C woke up time and again, being sad, and wanting to get out to pee. Over and over again she woke up, and by the time she finally slept good, I barely couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned a lot the rest of the night.
By morning rain came, and really poured down. Since I couldn’t sleep anymore I got up early. I had a head ache, and thought about heating up the stove. But that would mean a couple of hours before it was burned out completely, and a couple of hours more to get it cold enough to pack it out. In the end I decided to go with a cold breakfast and then pack down camp. We had a few baby bell cheeses and a couple of mini salamis, before we packed down camp, and left for home.
In general, the trip had been nice, but the lack of sleep, the heavy rain and the headache the next morning made it great to get back home too. But as always, it didn’t take long for me to miss the woods, and I’m already eager to get out again.
It’s been a long time since I last wrote here. Even though I’ve been doing a lot of daytrips with my family, I’ve been to busy to write here. But last weekend I finally got out on an overnighter, and I had a really great time.
For a while now I’ve had my eye out for the Gstove Heat view, a camp stove from a small company in Norway. I’ve wanted to try hot tent camping for a long time, and when I found the stove at a 40% discount I decided to buy it.
Last weekend I tried it for the first time, with my first time doing hot tent camping.
My wife was out of town, and my son preferred to hang out with grandpa this weekend, but both my daughters joined me for this trip.
We drove to the campsite south of Asa that I had stayed at with C in June. It had rained on the way up, but when we got there the rain stopped. It was calm, and no one else was there at the beginning. Soon though a car came by with two guys in it. They walked around for a couple of minutes and the vanished again.
I set up the tent and the stove on the same spot as I had set up my tent last time. This time I used the bigger Helsport Nordmarka tipi, since I was going to use the stove to heat up the tent.
I stared to chop up some firewood and got the fire going. It wasn’t long until the stove was burning hot. We made lunch and hung out in the tent. It was chilly outside, but inside the tent it was almost t-shirt weather.
A mother and two kids arrived at the campsite, and after a while a dad and two other kids arrived too. The families knew each other, and was going to sleep in one of the huts/shelter at the camp site.
I was surprised to see other people, as I’m out camping a lot, but rarely see anyone else doing anything more than day trips. But autumn is my favorite time of the year to be out, with the crisp fresh air, absence of bugs and the beautiful changing colors of the forest, and the mother seemed to feel the same.
We walked around the camp site a bit, but most of the time we just hung out in the tent, eating snacks and enjoying the heat from the stove. As usual, with trips like these, we had packed a lot of food and goodies; different cheeses, salamis, pepper steaks, bifteki, pita bread, potato chips etc.
When evening came, we lit the oil lamp and kept feeding the stove. I really like window in the door of the stove, and it gives out a really ambient cozy light from the fire.
We made dinner, and kept chilling in the tent. M, my oldest daughter, had brought her iPad and downloaded a few movies on Netflix and watched them. C and I killed time by snacking and putting firewood in the stove.
When it was time to sleep C was all winded up, but eventually calmed down enough to sleep. I stopped feeding the stove, but it wasn’t completely burned out before we went to sleep. I had brought a Carbon-monoxide alarm though just to feel a bit safer.
When C had fallen asleep it didn’t take long for me to fall asleep too. I woke up a couple of hour later though, when M accidentally threw her arm in my face in her sleep. After that it took a couple of hours for me to get back to sleep again.
I slept like a log for the rest of the night, but woke up at 08.00 by the sound of C loudly singing the kids song “Björnen sover” (the bear’s asleep) in her sleeping bag next to me. Well, papa bear wasn’t sleeping after that.
We got up, got the stove going and made breakfast. Pita bread fried in a lot of olive oil with a cheese and salami and some hot coffee for me, and hot coco for the kids.
After breakfast I let the fire burn for a while, to drive out any remaining moisture from the tent, before we finally desired to pack down our camp.
It looked like it was about to rain, and I packed down quickly, as I was happy to pack down dry gear, which is somewhat rare in these parts.
After this trip I’m really glad I bought the stove. It’s heavy, and definitely not something for hiking trips. But for car camping trips like these, or canoe camping trips with no portages it’s perfect. The quality is superb, and it really adds to the comfort to have a source of heat in the tent.
I think I’m going to save up to get a Tentipi Safir 5 BP for these types of trips. A canvas tipi would really take the comfort to the next level. I really like hiking, but I think can get used to these comfortable, food heavy camping trips too.
It’s vacation time, and I wanted to take Corinne out for a short canoe camping overnight trip.
Weather had changed for the worse in the last couple of weeks, and there where no more days of 30°C and endless sun. Now the days where filled with clouds, and the temperature rarely exceeded 20°C.
My plan was to drive to Asa, north of Växjö, and paddle for the day in Asasjön and then look for a camp for the night. I planned to start at a camp site that I had found when I hiked Sigfridsleden last year. I drove up pretty early, and we arrived before noon.
Unfortunately this day proved to be really windy. It had been windy in Växjö too, but when I arrived to the lake I realized that I wouldn’t want to paddle with Corinne in those conditions. The waves where pretty high, and the gusts would mean a lot of work to get the canoe to go straight while paddling solo.
I decided to set up a base camp at the camping grounds instead, make short trips on foot in the nearby area, and if the wind died down, paddle a bit later in the afternoon/evening.
We found a nice spot a bit away from the structures on the camp site, where the tent was hidden from the camp site by young trees and bushes. We set up the tent, and this was the first time I used my Tentipi Olivin with an inner.
Once I had the tent up I saw that I had gotten the lines to the top vent tangled when I strapped the inner to the tent, and it took some effort to get it right. My plan at first was to use the inner when I’m camping with Corinne, and only the fly and perhaps a bivy when I’m camping solo. But the top vent adjustment makes the process of adding the inner a very tedious process, and now I think I’ll just leave it as it is.
When the tent was up, and our sleeping gear was unpacked, I put up the hammock closer to the water. But the wind made the hammock act like a sail every time we left it, so I had to unhook it in one end and put it back in the back every time, to not risk damage from the strong gusts.
We fried a few sausages for lunch, and then hung out in the hammock for a while. It was quite cold, and the wind made it even worse. We had our puffy jackets and wind jackets on. It didn’t look like we where going to be able to paddle today.
We started to explore and old trail that followed the shore south from the camping grounds. Sigfridsleden now follows the road away from the place, but I think the overgrown trail is a remnant of the old Sigfridsleden. We crossed a broken down old bridge over a little stream, and came to a nice open area where we sat by the lake for a while, and Corinne passed time by throwing pine cones into the lake.
After a while we hiked back, but stopped once in a while to eat blueberries and wild strawberries that grew at the sides of the trail.
The rest of the day continued with a lot of hammock time, and we both fell asleep in the hammock on one occasion. During the evening we hiked along the shore north of the camping ground, and came to the place where I had camped before a couple of times, and the place where I had my first solo camping.
When we came back to our camp we made dinner by the lake, hung out in the hammock and eventually went inside to go to sleep. Corinne was too exited to sleep though, and didn’t fall asleep until after 22.30.
I’ve been using different types of floorless shelters for over a year now, and have gotten used to it. But I have to say that an inner really adds to a cozy feeling, and it’s nice to get the added wind block in conditions like these. I really don’t like how much weight it adds, but I think I can get used to having an inner. The problem I did see though, with a tipi-style tent, is that there isn’t a vestibule to cook in when it rains. But I think I could just unbuckle the inner on the two sides of the door and move the inner back to get a vestibule for cooking in bad conditions.
The next morning we woke up, had breakfast and then packed up. I hadn’t even unstrapped the canoe from the car roof.
Despite us not being able to paddle anything I was happy with the trip. It’s always nice to get out and to get a night in a tent. Corinne loves the outdoors, and I feel that this is a really good way to bond with the kids, without a lot of distractions.
Sigfridsleden starts in Asa, north of Växjö and goes 88 km south, past Växjö, down to Knapelid south of Åryd where it connects to Utvandrarleden. From Asa to Växjö the trail is approximately 50 km. Trail is the wrong word though, as most of this route is on paved road. The route is part of a 4000 km network of pilgrim routes that goes from Trondheim in Norway to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.
Last Friday I asked my father, whom my son would spend the weekend with, to drive me to Asa, where the trail starts. I’ve been here two times before, in the first week of January 2015 and 2016 on short overnight trips. Those times I only hiked a couple of km before setting up camp. This time though, I planned to hike the trail back to Växjö.
After studying the map I was prepared for a bit of road walking, and I didn’t have high expectations on the “trail”. But I saw it as a chance to get out, and as a workout as I planned to push myself and do high milage. The weather report predicted lows below freezing, so I decided to bring my Cumulus Panyam 600 and my Exped Winterlite, as I hate being cold.
I was dropped off at Asa church at around 18.30. I planned to hike for an hour or so, but I ended up hiking for two hours, and did ~9km. The first part follows a small road, which then turns into a logging road. After that you follow a trail next to the lake Asasjön. This part of the route was great, but short. I saw two roe deers and a crane on a field. They observed me, but as I came closer they left in a hurry.
Asasjön, a couple of hours before sundown
I either walked through uneven forests or next too fields, so it took me a while to find a good camp site. I had checked the map and planned to set up my tent near Skärsjön. When I came there I saw that there was a shooting range, with the targets in direction of the cape where I had planned to set up my tent. I walked past the shooting range and found some flat ground on the shore of Skärsjön, outside of the danger zone.
The whole evening had been windy, and the wind really picked up after I set up camp. The rain started falling just after I got my shelter up. The ground was loose, so my stakes didn’t get a good grip. I made a quick dinner and then went to bed. I was to tired to even read.
A little before 01.00 I woke up after falling in and out of sleep since I got to bed. I saw that the wind was about to rip a couple of the most exposed stakes. I got up, put on a rain jacket and started looking for big rocks. Wet snow had started to fall. I anchored the most exposed stakes with rocks and crawled back into my sleeping bag. As I laid there I was afraid for the first time while hiking. The trees around me made cracking sounds, and I was afraid that one would crack and fall on me. When the gusts really picked up I actually felt the ground sway. At first I thought I was imagining it, but after a while I realized that it was the roots of the nearby trees that moved beneath me as the wind shocked them. I went to sleep with an image of me being impaled with torn off roots from a falling tree.
I woke up to a beautiful morning with clear skies. But the wind still blew hard, which made it hard to pack down the tent.
I left my campsite and started hiking a gravel road. There were a few short parts with trail, but after that the long, seemingly endless stretch of pavement begun. The route had changed, so my map wasn’t accurate, but I had a newer map in my cellphone.
After I had passed the village Tolg, I saw a strange tower on a hill in the distance. I Googled it, and apparently it was Nykulla Observation Tower, built in the late 1950s. I thought about going up there, but from the sign near the parking lot it looked like it opened in May.
After the tower there was a short section of actual trail through a pine forest.
But then came the paved roads again. Endless paved roads for kilometer after kilometer. My feet cheered the few times they touched actual trail. I was in a bad mood, and thought to myself that the people that made this route must hate hikers, since most of it was on pavement. But I had myself to blame, since no-one forced me to be there.
As always I was looking for the perfect campsite. The route passed many fields and uneven forests, and I had planned to camp near Toftasjön, in Notteryd nature reserve. In the end my feet, calves, knees and thighs hurt. I was really tired as I had hiked nonstop, except for a 30-minute lunch break. I did the hike as a way to exercise and to see how far I could push myself in a day.
When I came to Notteryd I left Sigfridsleden and turned to the Notteryd circle trail. I followed the shore of Toftasjön out to the cape “Tungan” where I found a decent spot in a birch forest. The ground was pretty uneven, but at this point I didn’t care.
I was exhausted, and went to bed right after I had put up my shelter, at 20.00. I didn’t even make dinner. I had hiked somewhere between 37-40 km, which is a new record for me. I fell asleep and slept good the entire night.
I woke up at around 08.00, but stayed in my sleeping bag for a while. After that I took it slow, aired out the sleeping bag and dried out the slight condensation I had on the inside of my shelter.
A little after 10.00 I left my camp site and headed home. I followed the circle trail to the road, and then walked the rest of the way on the road that cuts through Fylleryd nature reserve, and I was back home in less than 2 hours.
I didn’t take a lot of photos on this trip. I saw a lot of small villages, farms, fields and pavement.
Would I recommend this hiking route? No, not unless you have a hiking nemesis that you want to trick into doing a really boring route. Or if you like hiking on paved roads. There may be a target group for a route like this, but for me, who hikes to disconnect from everyday life and to get in touch with nature the route was a disappointment.
The week before Easter the whole family on my wifes side went on vacation to Madeira. Madeira is a small island located in the Atlantic ocean, off the west coast of north Africa. It’s an autonomous region of Portugal. The island is relatively small, but it’s full of mountains, and the capital Funchal is built on the mountainside. The highest point of the island is Pico Ruivo, at 1862 meters above sea level. Madeira is a mecka for day hikers, as the island has a system of more than 2,170 km of levadas, accompanied with a walking trails. Levadas are aqueducts made to carry water to the agricultural regions.
Trip report
The trail between Pico do Arieiro and Pico Ruivo offers some stunning views, as you hike on the top of the island. The round-trip is about 12 km. On Pico do Arieiro theres a big parking lot, and the road to Pico do Arieiro is in good shape.
As me and my wife drove from the house we rented in Funchal, we left the 20°C and palm trees for colder weather. As we came higher up the mountain we first drove through Eucalyptus forests. Even higher than that the Eucalyptus trees got replaced with a really old-looking spruce forest. It didn’t feel like we were close to the equator, but we could just as well have been in an old forest in the Nordic. The spruce forest was a lot more beautiful than I’m used to though, since most of the spruce forests in the south of Sweden consists of dense plantations.
Even higher than that bushes and grass replaced the spruces. We saw a man and his teenage son hitchhiking and picked them up. They were on their way to Pico do Arieiro and was going to hike the same trail as we did.
When we came to the parking lot it was full. We dropped our passengers off and drove down the road and parked at the side of it.
The skies were partly clouded, and the air was cool. I was glad that I had brought my synthetic puffy.
The wind blew hard, and the trail was narrow at places, with steep sides. My wife has a fear of heights, and that fear was even bigger than she knew before this hike. But she overcame it and hiked the entire trail, despite the the height.
Almost the entire hike we had clouds around us, or just above our heads. On most parts of the trail there was wires as a fence from the cliffs. But in several places the poles had come lose, and the wires hung outside of the cliffs.
After a few km there is an intersection. The right trail is supposed to be a harder trail than the left one. But it was closed, so we took the left one instead, which goes through a series of tunnels.
When we came near Pico Ruivo we passed a dead forest. The trees, with branches that had been twisted by wind, had died from a fire. The boles where pale and white, with the cracks painted black by soot.
Just under the top of Pico Ruivo there is a cabin. We were hungry, and hoped it would be a cabin that sold food, but unfortunately it was closed. We rested for a while and ate the snacks we’d brought and then hiked the last 500 meters up to the top of Pico Ruivo. The top was covered in clouds so we didn’t get any spectacular views.
We found a geocach on the top, and after we logged it we turned back towards Pico Arieiro. As we hiked back we saw two pigeon-sized birds next to the trail. They were probably quite used to humans as they sat still while we photographed them.
On the last stretch back to the car the trail was covered in fog, and the wind blew hard. We had brought too little food and were both very hungry. The fog made the parts on the image below feel almost magic. It felt like the trail was floating in the clouds.
When we came back to the parking lot we stopped by the restaurant there and bought my new favorite fast food. A Portuguese steak sandwich. Two slices of Portuguese bread with garlic butter, a steak and a fried egg (plus cheese and ham, if you like the special). It was both cheap and delicious, and well needed after the hike.
Tomorrow evening I’ll be back on the trail, as I’ll hike Sigfridsleden from Asa to Växjö. It’ll be great to get a couple of nights under the stars again.
I’ve gradually started to make plans for the hikes this year. I had a plan to spend 10% of the nights outside, and do at least one hiking/camping trip every month.
This is how far I’ve come in my plans, but they may change during the year.
In March I plan to get a lift to Asa, north of Växjö and then hike Sigfridsleden, 53km from Asa back to Växjö. I’ll try to do it from a Friday afternoon to a Sunday.
In April I’ll hike Österlen-cirkeln after getting a tip about it from Brian Outdoor. I’m still looking at satellite photos and maps to find good places to set up camp. You’re not allowed to camp inside the nature reserve, other than on designated camp sites. But as I’m not a big fan of camp sites I try to find good spots outside of the nature reserve, but still close to the trail.
In May I’d like to hike a couple of days with Coast2Coast Sweden as they’ll be passing close to home on their way to Varberg. Coast2coast is an annual 400km group hike from Kalmar to Varberg, and from what I’ve gathered there is an emphasis on lightweight hiking.
In June I’d like to do some off-trail hiking on the east side of Helgasjön, starting at the small village Stojby.
In July I thought I might try to get to Femundsmarka national park in Norway. My initial plan is to start driving on a Thursday afternoon, hike Friday to Sunday and then drive back home on Monday. I’ll start at Grövelsjön, and that’s a 9+ hour drive from home. I’m not sure I’ll do this in July though. We’ll be visiting my wifes relatives in Greece in July, and I’ll only do this trip if I’ve got the time for it. Otherwise I’ll do it in September. Initially I plan to bring my oldest daughter on this trip, but it depends on how willing she actually is to tag along when the time comes.
The big trip of the year is planned to be in August. It’s the two week hike on Kungsleden from Vakkotavare to Abisko, that I wrote about here.
In September I’ll either try to get to Femundsmarka if I can’t get there in July, otherwise I’ve planned Skåneleden, on Bjärehalvön. I’m still not sure about this trail though, as it might be more rural than I prefer. I might go to Tiveden instead.
In October I want to go to Tresticklan. I really like Tresticklan / Lundsneset and I have to get back there at least once this year.
I haven’t planned anything for November and December yet, but there’s no rush.
These are my initial plans, but of course everything has to work out on the home front. Hopefully my wife or one of my kids will tag along one some of the hikes.
Last weekend I got out a short overnight trip, from Friday to Saturday. I had packed my backpack the evening before, and when I got off work on Friday I went home, changed my clothes, got my backpack and drove to Helgö.
I choose the same spot as I did on the overnight trip in early November. I parked at the entrance of the nature reserve and hiked on the trail for a short while, then turned away from the trail and into the forest.
After a short while I got to the same spot that I had camped in on my last overnighter on Helgö.
The ground was covered in snow, and I quickly set up my tent. This time I used my Luxe Outdoor Sil Twin Peak. I have sold a lot of gear this last month. Two old backpacks being sold, my Hilleberg Enan and my Luxe Outdoor Sil Hex Peak to.
I did like both my Hilleberg and my Sil Hex Peak. But I’m planning on buying a Hyperlite Mountain Gear Ultamid 2. And when I do, I’ll use that on my solo trips. Together with the Twin Peak the whole family can go hiking together. The one-person tents would just be collecting dust. I’m trying to clean out my gear closet and only keep what I need and what I will actually use. (I guess I could sell a few of my many stove-sets to)
When I had set up my tent I realized that I had forgot to bring my cell-foam mat. And since I had planned to bring my cell-foam mat I didn’t bring any sit pad.
I made a quick dinner before I crawled down in my sleeping bag. Many times when I sleep outside I can hardly keep my eyes open when I’ve crawled down in the sleeping bag, even when it’s early. But this time I actually stayed awake for a few hours reading.
I went to sleep, but woke up in the middle of night from the sound of an animal outside of the tent. From the rhythmic thumps it made I suspect it was a hare or a rabbit.
I woke up several times during the night, feeling cold from the ground. It felt like the sleeping mat didn’t insulate enough.
When I started packing up my gear I realized why. The floor in the tent wasn’t completely waterproof, and my body heat had melted the snow under the tent floor and the sleeping mat had been soaked in the middle. The sleeping mat itself should be waterproof, but I guess the insulation gets compromised by having it in a puddle. The next time I’ll use this tent I should bring either Polycro or have my cell-foam mat under the sleeping mat.
Before I packed up I stayed in my sleeping bag boiling water for coffee. It was nice to get some warm coffee before I left my cozy sleeping bag. After breakfast I quickly packed up and headed back to the car.
It was just a really short overnighter. Driving out after work, hiking for 15 minutes or so, setting up camp and leaving directly after breakfast the next morning. It wasn’t as relaxing as I had planned to.
Next weekend I’ll probably get out on an overnighter with the local outdoor group on Facebook. I have also planned to hike Sigfridsleden from Asa to Växjö one weekend in March. It’s 53 km and I think it’s possible to do it comfortably from a Friday afternoon to a Sunday. I know I made a previous statement of my feelings towards these low-land trails in dark spruce forests, but I’ll use it as an exercise for the summers longer hikes.
Småland Outdoor 