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Vandra i Sarek med lättviktspackning.

Vi träffar Sarekkännaren och författaren Karl Johan Piehl som skrivit boken Sarek, vandring, löpning och klättring med lättviktspackning

Karl Johan Piehl

För drygt 15 år sedan gjorde Karl Johan sin första fjällvandring i Jotunheimen och gjorde alla tänkbara fel med planering och utrustning, Karl Johan beskriver:

Vi lånade ett tält som var av samma typ du köper i matbutiken för 300kr. Det regnade rakt igenom och med lite vind liknade tältet en vacumpåse. För att hålla hög hygien hade jag bland annat packat ett rent set kallingar, t-shirts och strumpor i bomull för var dag. Vandringen gick över Besseggen, Glittertind och Galdöpiggen och avslutades med magsjuka efter att ha druckit av vattnet nedan fjällstationen i Spiterstulen. Trots nybörjarmissarna blev turen fantastisk och fjällen gjorde verkligen intryck. Efter denna tur påbörjades evolutionen till hur jag idag gör mina fjällturer. Från 35kg på ryggen till så lite som sju kilo för att korsa Sarek.

Sedan dess har Karl Johan lagt stora delar av fritiden i bergen, som vandrare, löpare och framförallt klättrare.

Åren innan jag fick barn så åkte jag nästan varje helg både sommar och vinter till olika klätterdestinationer, ofta Norge eller Bohuslän, och semestern spenderades i Alperna och/eller i Sarek. Nu är jag oftast hemma med barnen på helgerna, men som tur är gillar de också fjällen och vi spenderar flera veckor per år i fjällen.

“Sarek är välbesökt i dalgångarna, men uppe i bergen finns de mest spektakulära turerna där du inte träffar någon

Karl-Johan är fortfarande aktiv i Sarek, och har efter att han skrev sin första Sarekguidebok besökt fler områden och ytterligare cirka 30 toppar som finns med i hans nya bok: “Sarek, vandring, löpning och klättring med lättviktspackning”:

Från början var det min dåvarande partner som föreslog att vi skulle skriva var sin bok. Även andra personer har föreslagit att jag skulle skriva om Sarek eftersom de vet att jag har god kännedom om terrängen i området. Jag har gjort ett stort antal turer i Sarek varav ett flertal i områden jag inte kunnat läsa om tidigare och ansåg jag mig ha material till en guidebok som bidrar med nåt nytt och som sänker tröskeln för att uppleva Sarek – för alla. Jag ville göra en guidebok som är enhetlig och endast  baserar sig på förstahandsinformation. Framförallt toppturer och topptraverser i Sarek har jag själv upplevt att det är svårt att hitta detaljerad information om. Kanske är det för att många av de bergstraverser som jag, och andra, gör idag inte var möjliga för andra än elitidrottare förr, då alla bar på traditionell vandringsutrustning. Idag är läget helt annat och det finns otroligt spektakulära bergsturer att göra i Sarek som kan passa de flesta som gör rätt förberedelser, även nybörjare i friluftslivet. Sarek är välbesökt i dalgångarna, men uppe i bergen finns de mest spektakulära turerna där du inte träffar någon. Trots att en stor andel av alla fjällvandrare har möjlighet att göra bergsturer så ligger stora delar av Sareks massiv nästintill orört. Jag tror inte på tyst kunskap och har haft som mål att förmedla hur man går tillväga för att uppleva detta unika på ett smart sätt. 

När Karl Johan beskriver responsen från boken så har det uteslutande varit positiv sådan:

Det är jätteskoj, Jag tvekade länge för att ge ut en bok eftersom det var läskigt att bli offentlig på det viset. Det är flera personer som berättat att boken gett nya insikter och ändrat hela deras grundsyn på hur man kan röra sig i fjällen. Det känns jättekul eftersom jag själv känner att jag har fått många bitar på plats som möjliggjort ganska krävande fjällturer – för en vanlig  medelålders gubbe som mig. Och detta har jag försökt förmedla i boken, utöver ruttbeskrivningarna.

I sin bok om att uppleva Sarek lyfter Karl Johan fram packlistor och ger förslag på flera fina fina rutter med magnifika vyer. Nedan visar visas ett smakprov från hans bok, en vacker vandringsrutt mellan Gasskatjåhkkå och Skarjatjåhkkå:

När vi frågar Johan om tre generella tips så kommer svaren snabbt:

  1. -Gå med lättviktspackning. Detaljerna i packningen bildar helheten.
  2. -Fysisk träning inför fjällturen.
  3. -Bra matplanering, ta med rätt mängd.

Ovanstående tips är mina viktigaste för en givande fjälltur, och de tre tipsen utmynnar i samma mål: att fjällfärden känns enkel – du får access till att uppleva max utifrån dina personliga förutsättningar. Energin kan brännas på att uppleva fjället snarare än att transportera utrustning, säger Karl Johan.

Vill du inspireras mer av Karl Johans turer, få förslag på packning, mat och mycket mer så finns boken att köpa på Backpackinglinght.se. Beställ boken här

If you want a english version of the book Sarek check here

Marcus Falck

The White and Green Ribbon

Meet Paolo Peralta- A New Yorker skiing the 1300 km White Ribbon.

Paolo Peralta skiing the White ribbon- 2021.

Tell us about you? Who is Paolo Peralta?

-I’m 26 and grew up in the concrete jungle of New York City. Having a Swedish mom, being a Swedish citizen and speaking the language got me to move here 6 years ago for college. Always loved nature but wasn’t great at camping/hiking, signed up to Fjäll & Vildmarksledarlinjen at Malungs Folkhögskola not even knowing what a Fjäll was. After 2 years there I worked 4 season at STF Ritsem where I got my equipment dialed in I grew my skills and got used to being alone in the mountains. Came for school, stayed for the Fjäll!

You completed the White Ribbon 2021. How did you come up with that?

I fell in love with Nordic Ski Touring on my first ever winter trip in 2016 and knew this is what I wanted to focus my outdoors career on. Met a lot of people doing Vita and Gröna bandet in Ritsem over the years including best trip-mate Paul Loss.  Vita Bandet always seemed like a safe starting point for getting experience for real expeditions, I’d like to ski to the South Pole some day and every bit of experience with equipment and my own body I can get before then will help.

Photo: Paolo Peralta

Tell us about the The White Ribbon. How was the adventure?

What an AWFUL winter 2021 was, barely even counts as winter.  Weather is always a huge factor, but even more so last year. After 2 weeks of cold I had rain, sleet and temperatures rarely below -5C for the next 6 weeks which made for wet clothes, slow progress, low morale and negated many of my equipment choices. 

I had a day where I fought for 8 hours and only gained 8km because the snow was so bad, stuck to the sled and skis like cement, needed to be scraped off every 500m. And my boots were full of water that day to top it off, I had sunk to the thighs in slush while crossing a marsh, took 4 days to dry out the boot liners which is why I carry a spare set of liners now.

But it wasn’t always awful, with the warm temperatures and being a person who runs very hot I think I hold the record for most time spent shirtless on Vita Bandet. The highpoint of the the 89 days my Vita Band lasted was when I had 5 days from Kvikkjokk to Ritsem on an abbreviated Padjelantaled. Didn’t see a single cloud or feel a gust of wind the whole time, it was mid April with long days and I skied in my underwear until I ran out of sunscreen. And I didn’t use a tent for those 5 days, slept in the open every night, would just take off my boots, crawl into my sleeping bag and eat dinner looking at the evening sky fade into stars

In front: A lighter Paris pulk with a Rab pulk bag in the bottom. In the back Pablos pulk with a Rab polar bedding on top. Photo: Paolo Peralta

Any gear you want to put a spotlight on?

One thing that worked amazingly was my kitchen set up, I have 0 complaints about it and the only changes I’m making to it are swapping out the plywood I used for a base with a sheet of carbon fiber for weight savings and changing the aluminum windscreen to .2mm titanium foil for durability. Also, my down booties, will never go on a winter trip without them again.

On a long trip like this an Arctic bedding bag is a game changer, you save 20-30 minutes a day and it’s wonderful not having to fiddle with straps, stuffing a sleeping bag into a stuff sack and inflating/deflating pads. But commercially available ones are not waterproof and not even wet snow proof. I had a nightmare of a time when the rain was at its worst, sleeping in a damp down bag for 3 days isn’t fun at all. I’m hoping to have finished some prototypes of an improved bedding bag that will keep out a modern Scandinavian winter out for testing next winter.

Hands: I used 3 gloves this trip: Thick Hestra mittens for -15C or colder, GWS fleece gloves for -10C to +10C and synthetic liner gloves for when I was in camp and needed to handle small items. But this system didn’t work well for the slushy snow and rain. Since then I have started using Showa 282 gloves for wet weather and they are fantastic. Carrying 4 pairs of gloves might seem like overkill, depending on the weather changing daily over the course of a few months, it might actually not be variety enough. 

If you where about to skii the White Ribbon again, what would you do different?

Beeline through Jämtland until Hotagsfjällen. Helags was great but going via Storlien cost me 2 weeks of struggling through forests with deep snow and seldom a snow mobile track to ease the going.

I’d want to make things more interesting, start on New Years Day at Treriksröset or something like that, get to see some more aurora, enjoy the cold and dark hopefully. 

And bring a frying pan for January/February, there’s so much time spent in the tent then that you might as well spend it cooking real food; pancakes, hashbrowns, quesadillas  and meatballs would have been a treat. 


Pablos tips fore future White Ribbonears?

You don’t need as much fuel as you think.

You don’t need as much food as you think but you can never have enough diversity in snacks.
Bring the comfort items along at the start, you’ll have lots of tent time and will enjoy the chair/book/kindle and you can always send them home when they days grow long and you spend less time awake in camp.

Other than extra socks don’t bring more clothes than you can wear all at once.

Good prescription glacier glasses are worth the money, lived in my Julbo sunglasses the last month of the trip except when going indoors. Invest in a dehydrator, make your own meals and try them all before you head out.

While weight isn’t as critical as in summer, you will feel the difference between 20kg and 40kg when going uphill, try to save weight where you can.

Ease of access to stuff you know you’ll need during the day is huge, make it so you don’t have to dig through your sled to find stuff you use every day. 

Packing list

Starting set up: 

Base Weight 28kg

https://lighterpack.com/r/169rsn

Finish Line set up: 

Base Weight 20kg

https://lighterpack.com/r/lqy88x

Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/expat_vagabond_adventures/

Gear Video

Ramblings

Being tall and sleeping well

Being tall and discomfort:

Short people seem to handle back pain a lot better than taller ones do. Sure being tall has it’s advantages; at concerts for example (I don’t have to climb on other peoples shoulders to see the stage, and my air isn’t fart filled). While being tall is awesome and something I wish everybody could try at least once in their lives, where being tall really sucks is in the outdoor gear world. Gear cost more for taller people, it’s heavier and some gear just isn’t even made for tall people. Read More

Gear reviews

Gear Review: Thermarest xTherm sleeping pad

Let me start by saying that I sleep terribly whether I’m out on the trail or at home. My body just hates sleeping and most beds. With that said I have found some tricks that help me which I will write about in a separate post. This is however a post on the Thermarest xTherm and it’s usage for the outdoors.

I purchased the xTherm about two years ago after a shorter stint with the Exped synmat and dunmat 7s and a few other mats not worth mentioning. I went with the xTherm as I was always freezing from underneath and considering the cost of the Thermarest pads here in Sweden, I stuck with buying one mat that would work year round for me.

The first time I took home the xTherm and blew it up, besides the fact I thought I would die (from how long this thing took to blow up), it was also considerably thinner than the Exped synmat and felt much, much cheaper material wise. I was ready to turn it in and get my money back. I took it out and at least one of my suspicions were confirmed; it was thinner than the Exped. Though, quality wise, the xTherm is superb.

With that said I found the Thermarest xTherm to be at least as comfortable as the exped mats, and considerably warmer. That is saying a lot as I sleep in a quilt in the middle of winter months using quilts that are not exactly made for the deep winter conditions. I stay warm with the xTherm under me.

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Weight: 

I use the Thermarest xTherm Large version which weighs 650grams/23 ounces in stuff sack on my scale. This is a bit heavy for an ultralight hiker for three season uses, but for winter it’s damn light.

Size: 

Packed, it’s about 1000x bigger than an Iphone, I imagine it’s closer a 10000x lager unpacked. yes I know comparing this to the size of an iphone is pretty useless but as I don’t have the standard Nalgene bottle, you will just have to deal with this comparison.

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I read a lot of reviewers talk about falling off the sides and so on, personally I have never had that problem and I toss and turn like a half dying fish on land. In other words I find the width to be acceptable even for somebody as large as me, this can even be said about the length. The xTherm large fits my body very well. (190cm long and 95kilos in american monkey standard 6’3″ 215lbs)

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The actual width is 63cm / 25inches and length is 196cm /77 inches

The thickness of this pad is 6,3cm or 2,5 inches

Usage and durability:

I use this purely as a sleeping mat, though I’m sure there are other uses for it as well. anyway, after two years of use the xTherm is still going strong. I have gotten a few holes in it, that I could easily fix with the repair kit that is included. These holes where caused by my own stupidity than lack of durability on the xTherms part. It’s also well known that the thermarest xlite and xtherm and quite noisy, this however I don’t think is all that bad, at least not something I think about myself. I think it’s worse if your camping with others – they get annoyed by the sound.

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During most hikes I only have the xTherm with me – which I put directly on the ground, though if I know the weather is going to get really, really cold (say -20 degrees or so) than I usually put the xTherm on top of a lightweight closed cell sleeping mat. To this day I have still never been cold while using the xTherm. Which is also why this mat usually follows me even on summer hikes.

Comfort:

No, it’s not the plush, squish-able lovenest that our soft, pathetic bodies are so used to. It’s not unusual for me to wake up in the middle of the night with a slight pain in my lower back. However this pain is considerably less than with any other mats I have used over the years. On top of that I have a few tricks to get a very good nights sleep if I do everything right, which you can read under the title”being tall and discomfort”. Also, did I mention it’s damn warm? Warmth adds an immense amount of comfort to any nights rest.

I will say that on longer hikes when the softness has been beaten out of my body the xTherm offers excellent comfort and a good nights sleep.

Blowing hard:

While I have seen some reviews where the reviewers claim they only had to blow 6 times to fill the xTherm up: I call bullshit. Unless they have the lung capacity of dolphins (which I imagine have massive lungs), or getting paid a shitload of money to say those things, there is no way anybody can blow a Large xTherm up with just six blows. I always dread having to blow up my airpads after a long hike, and while I will admit the xTherm is easier to blow up than say the Multimat, it is still a long ways away from only taking six huffs.

In fact I am convinced one of the worst experiences on earth is hiking 30 kilometers and then having to blow up an airpad; which is why I purchased the excellent thermarest mini-pump. This is probably one of my favorite pieces of gear in my bag. If you have an airmat, buy the mini-pump.

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Conclusion:

ok, so I know I rambled a bit on this post – I wanted to shoot for a 2000 word review like some of my excellent hiker colleagues out in the world. But honestly I couldn’t do it. I tried so hard as well. With that said, if you are looking for one mat to rule all others, the xTherm is it. While heavy for summer use compared to other available options, it is the best for all conditions, and sometimes versatility is worth the weight.

The xTherm is the only mat I use anymore when I go out summer or winter. I sleep good on it, it’s warm and for it’s versatility relatively lightweight.