My favourite winter trek has got to be the trail to the Älgsjön lake. For starters, it’s just the perfect distance for a snowshoe hike, maybe a tad short but it’s also nice to come back home and have some energy in reserve. In the summertime there’s a road to Älgsjön, but it’s not really the lake that’s interesting, it’s the trail there. I take this trail many times every winter, and somehow I always come back home with pictures. It’s never the same – the conditions are different, the time of day is different, every winter is different… if you didn’t find anything interesting, then you were just staring at your feet all the time.

When you come to the lake in the winter, you approach it from the north. There’s a marshy area just before the lake, so the low winter sun shines right on your face and I swear I felt a little bit of warmth… or maybe I was imagining it, having not seen the sun for a long time. Normally the marsh is good for me, but this time I left empty handed as the wind had whipped the trees bare and snowless trees in the winter is a bit of a turn-off for me. But if the wind takes, it also gives – I found some lovely snow drifts elsewhere along the trail and that’s all the inspiration I need.

In my skiing past, if I wanted to sap out all of my energy, I sometimes continued the trail to Öratjärnen and Ryggskog but that’s a lot of pain for no gain (=big blisters and no pictures). So Älgsjön is all you need, all the excitement is bound to happen before you get there anyway!