Kungsleden Day 8 - Windy night

Overview

Hiking duration: 6:31
KM: 21.83
Elevation gain in Meters: 617
Start: After Pieljekaisestugan
End: Top of the Fjäll before the boatride to Vuonatjviken

Waking up from the wind

I had a bit of a hard time to fall asleep because of the wind. Because it hit the tent quite hard, there was a lot of noise inside of it… everyday another challenge ;-)

At around 1 am i woke up again and couldn’t fell asleep because of the wind. I then put my earphones in and tuned into some piano sound, that helped.

We got up at around 8 am and the sun was shining through the clouds. That helped to get out of the sleeping bag and start the ~6 km hike to Jäkkvikk. On the way down we found a nice „shelter/hut“ which we used for breakfast.

Maybe sleeping here would have been the better option, but you always know more afterwards.

Jäkkvikk

The remaining walk down was quick and easy, we were eager to shop 😀

Then there was a small hike through the town itself and we found the big ICA store.

We restocked on food and ate second breakfast at the store. There we met Mathias again, who was a bit ahead of us.

Info: For the next section you need to organize a boat transfer, as there is a 5 km lake crossing and no alternative. We knew that, and on the other site of the lake there are also cabins that can be rented. As there was no hotel option in Jäkkvikk, we had planned to go for a cabin for the night.

Mathias had already called the boat lady and she told him that the last boat is at 5pm. It was close to 12 when we got this info and we knew there is a 300m rowing section on the trail and about 18 km to go from Jäkkvikk to the boat pickup spot.

Another Info: There are rowing sections on the Kungsleden, where you need to use a row boat to cross a lake/river. Issue is, there are always 3 boats, so 2 on one side and the other one on the other side. If you arrive at the side with just one boat, you are out of luck. You have to row over, get one of the other boats, row back and tow the boat and then you can go to the other side. So you have to row the distance like 3 times…

So we (Mat, Anton, Fred) decided to try it and push to make the 5pm deadline. Let’s see if that went well 😅

The trail was really beautiful, it went mostly through a pine tree forest.

There were also multiple views of the lakes, which were really amazing! But as we had to push, there was not much time go enjoy them.

We arrived at the row boat location and … out of luck.

So we knew we had to make the way 3 times, as it was quite windy it took around 20 minutes for one way. We also saw that only 3 people are allowed on each boat, so we anyway had to do the way 3 times. Therefore Mathias already rowed over with Nicole and me. We reached the other shore at around 2:15pm and knew we had to hike another 13 km… we still decided to try it.

The way was still really lovely, but the stress took a bit away from it. After around an hour we got message from Mathias that he don‘t think we will make it and we should just slow down and take the boat in the morning. We agreed with that and slowed down and spent more time enjoying nature.

After a short while the climb to the Fjäll started, which was short but steep. Felt like Switzerland.

We crossed most of the Fjäll and found a nice camping spot next to a lake.

After setting up camp next to the 3 Swedish guys, we decided to go for a short swim/wash in the lake. It was crazy cold but it refreshed and revitalized us! It helped after the bad news that we won’t make it to the cabins tonight.

And that was it for day 8. Overall a nice day, beautiful nature, a small setback and then a nice finish with the cold lake.

Pictures