How five cousins hike to Sweden’s highest peak, Kebnekaise 2,109m
Just over a year ago, we were out on a hike. Dreaming of an adventure. What if we could climb Kebnekaise together I said to my children? YES…. is not the reply the gave me. After some good parenting they had change their mind. The reason to that they changed their mind might also have been; that their lovely cousins had accepted the challenge. Since we have previously done several adventures together so they quickly said yes. Everything from tenting in south of England, to climbing Preikestolen in Norway together. A year with training passed quickly and we were soon on our way to Kebnekaise.
Training for the Kebnekaise hike
Each month we hiked, pushing each other to train for the challenge. We increased the length and elevation gain of our hikes each month in order to have the final push, then grand finale in both elevation gain and length. Hike the west route of Kebnekaise. A total of 18 km and 1800 of elevation.
Some of the training sessions can be found on Instagram using #adolfssontillkeb2020
The long hike from Nikkaloukta to Kebnekaise
Tuesday we had planned for the hike from Nikkaloukta to Kebnekaise. Everyone was super excited and we had decided to hike the whole way. That’s an 18k warm up hike. We skipped the boat to save some money and rather spend it on a helicopter ride home. We sent two bags with the helicopter to have an easier hike there.
Dinner at Elsas kök, just to prepare for the Kebnekaise hike
We had two days prepared from the try to reach the top. Wednesday and Thursday was set aside for the top tour to have the best opportunity for a great experience. Wednesday looked to be the best of two awful days. High winds and rain. We prepared to give it a try on the first day. What better way to prepare with a dinner at Elsas Kitchen (Elsas kök) at Kebnekaise. The dinnner was fantastic and we can really recommend everyone to try the food. Really good.
The day of the Kebnekaise hike
The alarm bell rang, 05.30. With breakfast done and lunch bag prepared with were ready to start the hike at 07.45. 45 minutes later than planned. One learning to make. Pack your bags the night before to save time. It’s not a great feeling to start “stressed”. We planned to be out for up to 16 hours, but after having heard stories that an 11 year old did the climb in 13 hours, the kids now have a time to beat.
The day is now a memory. A memory for me and the children. Our own memories, and memories we will share together. Because it became a day to remember. We all made it. What a great feeling to be 12, 14, 16 (and older) to stand on top of the highest peak of Sweden, having conquered Kebnekaise.
We made it to the top and back without any real problem and with “great weather” in 10 hours. What a success. Noel, Leon, Bella, Estelle and Enzo. Your are all heroes!!!
Here’s a small clip when Noel explain how we climbed and hiked the west route of Kebnekaise.
The rest day that became the third hike
The day after, we decided to take a rest day. An easy hike to Tarfala glacier lake for a swim. Things to remember from that day. The hike isn’t as easy as it says. 18k and 600m of elevation. The glacier lake is cold. Even if its summer. 🙂
And so to the fun part… cleaning up. The Kebnekaise base station holds very high standards for being a mountain cabin. Great food and facilities. Therefore, we wanted to leave the mountain cabin at Kebnekaise shining as when we arrived.
LINK TO CLEAN UP MOVIE
Helicopter home from Kebnekaise
To celebrate how we successfully hiked Kebnekaise with all children, without any complaints or issues we thought we take the helicopter back to Nikkaloukta. This was obviously something else to look forward to for everyone and we can truly recommend it. It’s a short helicopter flight from Kebnekaise to Nikkaloukta, but its worth every “Krona”. Costing 850 SEK per person. Flying over the valley of Kebnekaise, its both a beautiful view and a great feeling of achievement and accomplishment of a great trip and adventure.
Gears and energy used when hiking Kebnekaise
This could obviously be a whole new blog post, but I wanted a mention a few learnings. Starting with food and energy. As with many of my long runs and ultra races, I like to pack more energy and variety than I think I need. This to feel safe, I always make sure I have energy and water more than enough.
This time I had packed both normal gel that I use while running races, energy bar (not protein bar), chocolate bars, lots of Swedish candy but the favourite of the day was actually the energy bar that we got from the lunch bag from Kebnekaise fjällstation. It was very tasty. During the breakfast we bought at Kebnekaise, we did a few extra sandwiches in a lunch bag they provided. If it was value in the lunch bag or not is really a different question, but the energy bar tasted great. None of us ran low on energy, and I used my learnings from running to ensure we kept the energy levels high. We never really stopped for a long break for lunch, rather constantly kept moving slowly, and ate something at the minimum each hour.
In regards to water, we took the opportunity to drink from the streams and topped up our bottles. Remember to have your bottles full when leaving the bridge. There isn’t any good stream thereafter. I had 2,5 litres packed and it was more than enough for me and for the kids to take some. Remember, we did’t not have a sunny hike though. As with food, its better to drink something very frequently over drink a lot at times. I had my new Salomon flask with filtering system with me, and it worked great. It’s not really needed in most streams, but then again, better safe than sorry.
As for clothes, we had much on. We had two layered pants with rain pants prepared and two layers under the rain jacket. It was way too hot even on this cold day. But… I’m glad we had too much on. I prefer to be too hot over freezing. When the cold takes over, its hard to think of anything else.
We all used proper hiking boots, other than me and Estelle. For Estelle I had bought a new pair of Salomon Speedcross 5 for the Kebnekaise hike. She loved them and they worked great all the way. She did complain at the end though that it started to hurt under her feet. So, perhaps to use trailrunning shoes one need more training. It would perhaps have been better with a pair of shoes with firmer soles for her. I used my beloved Altra Lone Peak. I’m currently on version LP 4.5 of Altra and I love them. I am used to running long races in similar terrains, so I had no problem at all. For me the Altra Lone Peak 4.5 was the perfect choice.
Some other clips from the Kebnekaise hike
Here’s some other clips from the Kebnekaise hike. Some in 360 video. When watching a 360 video, you do it best watching it on YouTube or a video player/browser that support 360 videos so you can move the camera around, and get the feeling of being on top of Kebnekaise south top. The 360 videos I’ve shot with my Insta360 One R camera. A really fun little camera. Even most of the non 360 videos I’ve shot with the Insta360 camera, and then re-edited in the Insta360 software.
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