Wild Winter Camping

One bottle of Scottish whiskey, two snowmobile rides, three riders, four tents, five friends and six days & nights in the wild. Come along on a winter camp in the big and remote mountains in the very north of Sweden. A place where no regular roads go, cellphones have no reach and no other skiers are seen for a whole week. A wild winter area where other things can appear more clear than ever before – the northern lights, nature's big and intensive beauty, but most of all the pure joy of sharing the ski touring and winter camping experience with a bunch of good friends. Thin clouds cover the sky. The three friends are on the way to 1,997 meters high Sielmatjåkka, located 16 kilometers north of Sweden's highest mountain, Kebnekaise.

Tomas Bergemalm is in the front keeping a good pace with his light gear. Telemark skier Per Jonsson is right behind him, followed by Daniel Furberg hiking on his splitboard. As they reach the bowl marking the start of the mountain, thick clouds start to build around the summit. It is Swedish winter in northern Lapland and the crew is all alone – there is no cell phone coverage and the Sami who drove them out here with the snowmobiles had long returned to the Nikkaluokta STF's mountain cabin two hours south. Tomas Bergemalm, age 37, has been in similar situations before; he has crossed Greenland, been in Peru climbing 6,000 meters peaks and spent a total of nine winters in Canada, France, and Switzerland.

Tomas put his skies on the backpack, making it a boot pack to the summit. The clouds get heavier; will the crew ascend Sielmatjåkka's beautiful southwest face in flat light? A moment later, Thomas is alone, the others are lagging behind, and he sees how it brightens above him. "Maybe I'm going out of this haze soon to get a fantastic fuzzy sea of clouds below me?", he thinks as he methodically hits the left boot in the snow to come another step closer to the summit while preparing a great trail for his friends. Tomas' step is effective – his consistent pace gives him a good vertical speed, while at the same time saving energy that he can later convert into the addictive kinetic energy of the big beautiful ski turns down the mountain. It gets hot.

The clouds seem to dissolve. Tomas breaks through the cloud; now he overlooks the creamy sea of clouds. It is only the very highest peaks in Norway and Kebnekaise that reach above, like icebergs sticking up above the water. He is alone enjoying the silence before Daniel and Per join him. Their trip to Nallo and the Swedish white wilderness started a few days earlier. First stop was the mining town of Kiruna. Second stop the grocery store. They filled their shopping cart with food for breakfasts, lunches and dinners. In addition, snacks and toilet paper. The receipt showed a total of 274 EUROS: food for five people during six days.

Add to that the cost of gas for the bus from Kiruna to Nikkaluokta and the scooter transport to and from Nallo, and you get a total of 180 EUROS per person. A winter ski adventure in northern Sweden is an affordable holiday. The cost is equivalent to a week's lift pass in one of the world's tourist-filled ski resorts. The five passengers sat on a bus from Kiruna to the Sami village of Nikkaluokta; in addition to the three riders, there are photographer Fredrik Schenholm and film maker Eirik Nicolai Heim. The village is located where the public road ends and the hiking trails begin.

Nikkaluokta is home to about a dozen families, most of which in winter are fed by tourism. 19 kilometers west rises the Kebnekaise range, and farther to the northwest is the Nallo or "needle", which is both a mountain with a characteristic sharp, little top, and a pair of mountain huts at the foot of the mountain in the broad valley of Stuor Räitavagge. The crew has traded the bus for sleighs travelling behind two snowmobiles driven by Sami with a special permit for entering the area of Nallo. Two hours later, they arrive in Nallo, surrounded by several peaks around 2,000 meters. The crew pitched four tents 200 meters away from the huts of Nallo.

They built a small community in the snow – a large round wall of snow for dining with a snow-shaped table and seats. The toilet was also built from snow: two igloos in different sizes without roof and with an excavated pit in the center of the large igloo. The small igloo was for the smaller needs. As the crew built the snowy camp, it was overcast, but as time passed by the clouds disappeared. And then it came – the Aurora Borealis. The shimmering green light produced by charged particles crashing into Earth's atmosphere. Laid-back in the snow, each with a dash of warm Scottish Ancnoc whiskey in their coffee mugs, with no distracting street lights, they could enjoy the graceful green aurora streaks silhouetted against a bottom of black infinite space dotted with small twinkling white stars.

The skiers interpreted this as a good sign for the following six days. A few days later, Tomas and Daniel stand at the summit of the nearly 2,000 meters high Sielmatjåkka. Per Jonsson's clear blue shell jacket is visible through the cloud beneath them. He gets more and more visible, and it is not due to Per's vertical speed, it is due to the clouds dissolving. The wind and the sun are strong enough to make the clouds around Sielmatjåkka disappear. As the crew finishes lunch on the summit, the view down to the bowl is perfect. They can also see the some of the valleys and peak of previous ski days. "This is too good to be true," says Per while taking a bite of his sandwich.

Not far away, on the summit of Nallo, stand Fredrik and Eirik, ready to shoot the ski descents. Tomas is rewarded with the first turns down the sunny southwest face. Small turns in the beginning, big turns towards the end, and his legs are burning as he stops at the bottom. Three minutes later the skiers are once again united, this time with even bigger smiles on their faces than earlier on the summit.