Midnight Sun 2019: Part 2
Wednesday, 13 November 2019 20:45![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
iguana
For a four-day weekend at the end of my trip to Norway, we left the country several times, in part thanks to running around Treriksrøysa several times, but also for a trip to Abisko and Kiruna in Sweden.
(← Part 1)
Friday - Treriksrøysa
Treriksrøysa/Treriksröset/Kolmen valtakunnan rajapyykki is the Three-Country Cairn at the tripoint of Norway, Sweden and Finland, and the 12 kilometer walk from parking in Finland is really beautiful. We saw lots of reindeer roaming around, especially on the way back, and running around the concrete cairn, which is surrounded by a board walk on a lake, was good fun too.
As the sun got lower (I nearly wrote "as the sun was setting" but that does not happen) we got some beautiful nacreous clouds with pastel colours around the edges that my camera couldn't really do justice to:
Treriksrøysa/Treriksröset/Kolmen valtakunnan rajapyykki is the Three-Country Cairn at the tripoint of Norway, Sweden and Finland, and the 12 kilometer walk from parking in Finland is really beautiful. We saw lots of reindeer roaming around, especially on the way back, and running around the concrete cairn, which is surrounded by a board walk on a lake, was good fun too.
As the sun got lower (I nearly wrote "as the sun was setting" but that does not happen) we got some beautiful nacreous clouds with pastel colours around the edges that my camera couldn't really do justice to:
Saturday - Rismålhøgda (Ringvassøya) and Trehørningen (Kvaløya)
I wrote in my previous entry that I thought Kvaløya was the northernmost point I went to, but the walk we did on Ringvassøya beats it by a couple of hundred metres, having it looked it up.
We drove through a tunnel from Kvaløya to Ringvassøya and took a steep walk up a shrubby hillside to the top where there was a small lake between some peaks. We had fantastic views of the fjords.
South to one of the western arms of Kvaløya to climb Trehørningen, which started off with some beautiful rainbows but turned into quite a wet walk in the end, with the peak blasting us with wet winds coming straight from out at sea. It was a bracing final walk in Norway!
I wrote in my previous entry that I thought Kvaløya was the northernmost point I went to, but the walk we did on Ringvassøya beats it by a couple of hundred metres, having it looked it up.
We drove through a tunnel from Kvaløya to Ringvassøya and took a steep walk up a shrubby hillside to the top where there was a small lake between some peaks. We had fantastic views of the fjords.
South to one of the western arms of Kvaløya to climb Trehørningen, which started off with some beautiful rainbows but turned into quite a wet walk in the end, with the peak blasting us with wet winds coming straight from out at sea. It was a bracing final walk in Norway!
Sunday - Abisko
We had decided to take an overnight trip to Kiruna in northern Sweden, since Emily wanted to do the Midnattsol trail there, and I had unfinished business with the Kiruna Mine Tour, having narrowly missed being promoted from the reserve list when I last visited. (It worked out; instead I saw a stunning nacreous cloud which are apparently quite rare.
It's a long drive to Kiruna from Tromsø, with a route skimming past Narvik and then running parallel to the LKAB railway line for most of the rest of the way. What I hadn't expected was how beautiful the mountain road that ran from Narvik to the Norway/Sweden border would be.
Apparently mountain lodges are very common on the Norway side around here, and it's not difficult to see why.
Soon we were driving alongside the lake Torneträsk, which we had seen (partly) frozen over from the top of the Abisko tourist cable car a few years before, and we saw the familiar Lapporten valley straight ahead of us.
We decided to stop at Abisko to use the loo and see what the area was like in summer. It turned out to be absolutely stunning! We ended up staying longer than we intended, just wandering around the nature walks, looking out over the river, and hiking the tiniest amount of Kungsleden.
We had decided to take an overnight trip to Kiruna in northern Sweden, since Emily wanted to do the Midnattsol trail there, and I had unfinished business with the Kiruna Mine Tour, having narrowly missed being promoted from the reserve list when I last visited. (It worked out; instead I saw a stunning nacreous cloud which are apparently quite rare.
It's a long drive to Kiruna from Tromsø, with a route skimming past Narvik and then running parallel to the LKAB railway line for most of the rest of the way. What I hadn't expected was how beautiful the mountain road that ran from Narvik to the Norway/Sweden border would be.
Apparently mountain lodges are very common on the Norway side around here, and it's not difficult to see why.
Soon we were driving alongside the lake Torneträsk, which we had seen (partly) frozen over from the top of the Abisko tourist cable car a few years before, and we saw the familiar Lapporten valley straight ahead of us.
We decided to stop at Abisko to use the loo and see what the area was like in summer. It turned out to be absolutely stunning! We ended up staying longer than we intended, just wandering around the nature walks, looking out over the river, and hiking the tiniest amount of Kungsleden.
Monday - Kiruna
Eventually we drove on to Kiruna, which was a surreal experience because, as promised, some of the town had been relocated in the meantime! Of particular note was the old town hall was part-way demolished, with its steampunky clock tower relocated to the new, frankly, worse, building across town. The church was still around, as was LKAB's Gullriset accomodation, which we were staying in.
Kiruna has a midnight sun walk which Emily had been wanting to do, so we set off on that in the late evening on Sunday. From the top of the hill we could see the satellite dish of the European Space Agency's Kiruna station, and the sun got noticeably lower in the sky than in Tromsø.
The route was somewhat heavily interrupted by the construction works of the re-routed E10 motorway, which was being built as an overpass across the trail, and severely disrupted the second half of the walk back from the hilltop. We got quite lost, especially since Google Maps and even Openstreetmap were having trouble keeping up with all the changes here!
We got back to Gullriset at around 2am on Monday. Gullriset is close enough to the mines to hear the nightly drill blasting, though we didn't hear any when we stayed in the same lodgings in 2017. However, exhausted as I was and falling asleep with my earplugs in (which don't block much bass anyway), I did indeed feel a rumble, and managed to remember it as I fell asleep. (Emily was still up and heard it too. The next day we were both a little nervous to mention it in case the other hadn't.) Pretty exciting to hear the ground being blasted out from nearly underneath you!
The next day we were booked on the LKAB mine tour, and just about made it after struggling to find parking because, you know, Kiruna's being dug up, and the advertised parking was very not available. We got the coach down into the mines, and had a (very) short walk in the dark while seeing some huge machinery. It was a good enough tour, though a little heavy on the PR from the mining company. At the end we got to help ourselves to some iron pellets and a magnetic core section, which made it all worth it!
So with Kiruna finally "done", we got back in the car and started the drive back to Tromsø. We stopped a few times to let one of the extremely long LKAB trains full of iron pellets pass, then drove back past them, as the speed limit was a little faster than the train tended to go, playing Flight of the Valkyries.
And, gosh, aside from a few strolls along some mountain trails on the way back to the border, that was my last full day in the arctic. Emily drove me back to Tromsø airport the next day and I was back in the UK by evening of the 2 July, already looking forward to going back!
Eventually we drove on to Kiruna, which was a surreal experience because, as promised, some of the town had been relocated in the meantime! Of particular note was the old town hall was part-way demolished, with its steampunky clock tower relocated to the new, frankly, worse, building across town. The church was still around, as was LKAB's Gullriset accomodation, which we were staying in.
Kiruna has a midnight sun walk which Emily had been wanting to do, so we set off on that in the late evening on Sunday. From the top of the hill we could see the satellite dish of the European Space Agency's Kiruna station, and the sun got noticeably lower in the sky than in Tromsø.
The route was somewhat heavily interrupted by the construction works of the re-routed E10 motorway, which was being built as an overpass across the trail, and severely disrupted the second half of the walk back from the hilltop. We got quite lost, especially since Google Maps and even Openstreetmap were having trouble keeping up with all the changes here!
We got back to Gullriset at around 2am on Monday. Gullriset is close enough to the mines to hear the nightly drill blasting, though we didn't hear any when we stayed in the same lodgings in 2017. However, exhausted as I was and falling asleep with my earplugs in (which don't block much bass anyway), I did indeed feel a rumble, and managed to remember it as I fell asleep. (Emily was still up and heard it too. The next day we were both a little nervous to mention it in case the other hadn't.) Pretty exciting to hear the ground being blasted out from nearly underneath you!
The next day we were booked on the LKAB mine tour, and just about made it after struggling to find parking because, you know, Kiruna's being dug up, and the advertised parking was very not available. We got the coach down into the mines, and had a (very) short walk in the dark while seeing some huge machinery. It was a good enough tour, though a little heavy on the PR from the mining company. At the end we got to help ourselves to some iron pellets and a magnetic core section, which made it all worth it!
So with Kiruna finally "done", we got back in the car and started the drive back to Tromsø. We stopped a few times to let one of the extremely long LKAB trains full of iron pellets pass, then drove back past them, as the speed limit was a little faster than the train tended to go, playing Flight of the Valkyries.
And, gosh, aside from a few strolls along some mountain trails on the way back to the border, that was my last full day in the arctic. Emily drove me back to Tromsø airport the next day and I was back in the UK by evening of the 2 July, already looking forward to going back!
