Top tour at the Artic Circle

Photo: www.imagebank.sweden.se/Henrik Trygg

 

They also offer plenty of excursions and classes. We decided not to go to the ”crash school”, where you can learn how to crash without hurting yourself (!), but opted for a classic top tour. Ten people signed up and we left at 9 o'clock in the morning with our guide, Anders.

The task was to walk up one of the mountains in the area with our skis on and then go down off-piste.To walk up a mountain you use cross-country skis covered with special hides, which enable you to walk up without gliding backwards as well as to ski down.

Our group was to climb Laktatjokka - it was physically the hardest thing I had ever done in my life, but it was all worth it when we walked up through the clouds and saw an alien, almost lunar landscape bathed in sunlight. We could see the”Lapp Gate" from the top, one of Lappland’s most photographed natural formations. Going up took 5 hours but coming down was a bit faster - heaven for off-piste skiers.

Back at Riksgränsen in the evening, we went to the pub and while drinking a well-deserved beer, we signed our name in the ”top tour book”, a register that goes back to the thirties recording who has climbed which peak.