Sarek diaries
Day 5. Along the edge of a rocky cliff
11.09. Bielavarasj - Snavvavagge - Rapadalen. Distance: 11.2 km
We didn’t have a chance to see Laddebakte and Snavvavagge that day. Unfortunately, both the top of the mountain and the valley were blanketed with dense clouds. But that was later, first we had to find a path up…
The map shows that the slope here is quite steep. On the photographs that we’d seen before, the path was covered with thickets and we were a little worried whether it would be easy for us to find the right way.
As we expected, this small section of the trail became the most difficult part of the whole trip. First, when we planned the route, we thought we would go from south to north. In that case, we would need to go down from Snavvavagge. Remembering this slope now, I can definitely say that this is not something we would want to do. It is better to be going up.
In fact, it took us about an hour to overcome a 500-meter-long section of walk and 150 meters of climb. And as soon as we got up, we were met by the strongest headwind combined with heavy rain. There was nowhere to hide, so we continued to walk towards the wind and rain across the entire valley.
When we reached the other side of Snavvavagge, the wind calmed down a bit. But, nevertheless, it remained too strong to set up a camp on the slope, as we’d planned. So we decided to sacrifice a view of the Rapadalen and go down to the valley to look for a camping place there.
The rain did not stop. We ourselves, along with almost all our things, were soaked through. The path turned into a continuous stream of water, sometimes reaching our ankles. Finally, completely exhausted, we found a relatively dry place on the river bank to pitch a tent.
This was supposed to be a "day off." We thought that by lunch we would have set a camp and still have time to admire Rapadalen. Although the distance we traveled was only 11 km, it took us nearly all day to cover them.
