Easter is a classic time for a skiing (or snowshoeing) trip in the mountains. The sunny fifth season days really are the best up in the mountains so I have a tradition to do a trip every year, normally I pick any sunny Saturday in March or very early April but with Easter giving us extra days off, it’s perfect.

There’s plenty of daylight at this time of the year so I was in no hurry to get to Messlingen. Just as well because the road from Hede to Messlingen was in a bad shape, no mud pits as yet where the car would get stuck (give it a week or two and those mud pits will be there), but so wet that my car quickly changed colour from green to mud. So glad I just washed it…

The trip plan I had for the day was to take the trail that passes behind my cabin and follow it up to the alpine tundra. I hiked up there last year but the weather was horrible, it was a downright snowstorm so not a chance to see any scenery. This is now going to be my ”home away from home” so I was curious to see what it really looked like!

When I got up to the forest line, I found a perfect place for a break. Or rather, everybody and their dog had found the place before me so I just followed the tracks, but luckily when I got there the crowds had already left. It’s a small valley-like depression that provides protection from the wind and because it faces south, it’s just perfect. In Swedish they’re called ”snögrop”, snow pits. It means that you tramp the snow to form a seating place where you can enjoy your coffee in the warm sunshine with beautiful scenery around you, awesome! Except of course I wanted to maximise the scenery part of this deal so I made my snögrop higher up on the slope, which means that I didn’t get full protection from the wind which means that it wasn’t quite as pleasant to sit there as it would’ve been otherwise but nevermind… it was awesome!

Before I was completely freezing from sitting down in the wind, I got back up on the trail. The alpine tundra was just as magnificent as I had imaged it with wide open spaces with snow and mountains as far as the eye could reach. And then when I followed the trail up to the Öster-Stoljan peak, it only got better. How about a 360 degree mountain panorama? It could be done here. I didn’t feel like trying a hand-held 360 panorama though so I settled for a couple of smaller views. The one below is looking towards west.

There’s just one problem with admiring this landscape. It was cold. Really, really cold. I was appropriately dressed for the weather, but when you get up on these peaks the wind is relentless. And this wasn’t even a bad wind!

Öster-Stoljan seems to be a very popular place. Understandable, because it’s one of the closest peaks from Messlingen and very easy to reach. At one point I was seeing so many snow mobiles up there that I thought they had a convention. Judging by all the tracks, I was the only one who got there by foot… Good for me.

When I got back to the car, it was already 6pm so the light was nice. My plan was to take the road to Funäsdalen (no way was I going to take the muddy road back to Hede!) because there would be quite a few opportunities for catching the evening light. And just when I found my opportunity, the light faded. Some thin clouds in the west, just enough to obscure the sun so that the glorious warm sunshine was transformed to blah during the time it took me to walk from the car to my subject, because it figures that there’s no way to park right next to it.

But no complaining. This tradition of mine, it will most definitely continue!