2010-12-28 64 20

Location

In a forest, pretty near Krånfors, Skellefteå. About 200 km from where I currently live(vaccation at my grandma's).

Participants

Vswe

Plans

Head out in the morning (when it's still dark). Hopefully return before it gets dark again(it's just light a few hours here).

Expedition

Let's Go

I left some time before 8 AM, it was about -22 degrees C outside and I had about 200 km of walking ahead of me. I took a kicksled and started my journey. After some time I stopped to take a picture but the camera told me to change the battery, the battery was almost newly charged and I had only took a single picture earlier on my travel. The electronics really didn't liked the low temperature. However I knew that the phone I had with me had a camera in it and therefore I continued on my kicksled without thinking too much about the "broken" camera (on a sidenote, the camera worked perfectly (in the warm house) when I came home).

It's not only the camera that is cold

After about 6 km I arrived at a somewhat bigger road and I left the kicksled there. I left it because of a few different reasons, including: me being cold and the road wasn't too good kicksledding on today. Continuing on foot I walked for a while and I can assure you, it felt a lot colder than -22 and I think it was, some said that it was about -27 over there. However I felt that my face had frozen so I searched for the phone and took a photo of myself. I almost froze my hand off. The ice in my face doesn't prove the low temprature but you can surely tell it's below 0. Therefore I think it's time for me to claim the Frozen Geohash achievement (all my previous expeditions have all been below zero though).

Into the forest

After a total distance of about 19 km or so I reached the very small road I were looking for. It was some snow on it but not as much as it could've been. Only about 30 cm instead of the 100 cm depth it could've been. I followed the road in the snow, it was about 700 meters left to the hashpoint now. After some walking my mood dropped when a cliff suddenly appeared at the right hand side of the road. It was at least 25 meters down and if the hashpoint was down there I wouldn't be able to reach it. And I knew that the hashpoint was about 50 meters off the road, at the right hand side...

Hashpoint time?

After following the road a bit more it turned left a bit and moved away from the cliff. I didn't knew if this was enough though, a distance of 50 meters was needed. At this time I had been out in the cold for a couple of hours and all my sweat from the walk had frozen in my face. In my eyebrows and eyelashes I had ice balls as big as ping-bong balls. I had to remove them since my view was decreased and I had to see properly now when I were close to the hash. I left the road, 50 meters to go. After 25 meters I looked back, I wasn't sure If I had walked half of the way to the cliff, I was afraid I hadn't. 10 meters to go, the cliff was very close now, 9 meters... 8 meters... 9 meters. Happy face. I turned about 120 degrees to the left and found the hashpoint, just a few meters from the cliff. I took some picture and almost froze my hand off once again.

The way back

I ran back at the small road to get warm again. After some time walking I felt pretty tired in my legs and I didn't want to have a replay of my last long walk where I couldn't walk properly for a few days afterwards. I called my mum and she picked me up. At this time I had traveled a distance of about 30 km. I could check better when I can see the tracklog.