When you drive to Messlingen from the south, you pass two isolated mountain massives, the first one is Sonfjället which you can see from the lay-by right after Linsell, and the second one is Särvfjället which is visible about half-way on the road between Hede and Messlingen. Sonfjället has a very recognisable profile but Särvfjället is a bit of a … clump, as you see it from the road. But nonetheless, it has bothered me that for years I’ve been driving past the mountain but never visited. So today was the time to remedy it.
A pleasant surprise to find that the road to Särvfjället goes almost way up to the tree line. The last stretch of the road is a toll road but the toll is nominal (20 SEK), and you can park your car by the waffle cabin. Yes, there are waffles here. It’s important.
Very soon after I started my hike, I found that the mountain is nothing like I imagined it would be. I always thought it’s just that one big peak, but when you get there you find that it’s actually multiple peaks (I counted 7-10, depends a little bit on how you define a ”peak” and where you stand because some peaks are hidden behind others) in a kind of a horseshoe formation, with one peak in the middle of the horseshoe (or the valley between the ranges). I was well impressed with the whole thing, it was love at first sight! The light wasn’t very good (has it ever been during this week) so I knew that I wouldn’t get much pictures done, but it’s just as well. I just have to come back here again, preferably in September when the valley will be burning with the autumn colours. That should be awesome! There’s even a creek flowing through the valley, I heard some whitewater but I didn’t really get to see it, because I was going in a slightly different direction.
In fact, I was going in the wrong direction… I don’t have any map which shows Särvfjället in detail (it’s that distant from anything else that none of the terrain maps cover it) but I looked at Eniro and Google Earth the night before to try to figure out which would be the best way to the highest peak, and I thought I found a good one. But then when I was standing there in the valley, I started hesitating about which of the peaks was actually the highest one, I knew it was something ahead to the left of me so I took the first best path going that way. And when I got up to the peak which I thought was the peak I wanted, I found that it was not it. Turns out that there are two ridges on the west side of the massif, and the highest peak is on the outer side which is not visible from the valley, at all. To make matters worse, it started raining so I was a bit crestfallen and seriously considered to give up on the peak, I mean I knew at this point already that I would be coming back here. But as I was following the inner ridge back, I saw that the highest peak was in fact quite easily within reach and when it stopped raining as well, I decided to do it. Good move, it was a bit rocky at places but otherwise very easy, and when I reached the peak the sun came out as well!
Then on the way down, I found two huge reindeer antlers. Somebody had lifted them up on a rock so they wouldn’t rot in the bush, but there was no owner’s tag on them so I figured that whoever found them, had to give them up because they are too big and heavy to carry. Except for my Loka of course, although I could only manage to strap on one of them. But I was happy anyway, the antler was an icing on the cake and I smiled all the back to the waffle cabin. And I had great timing with that, because as soon as I was inside, it started pouring down.
Can’t wait for September and do I dare to hope for a little bit better weather then?