First Arctic Outing: Grövelsjön by ski and sled!

Life Boost!

It’s -20F with winds kicking around 15mph, and I’m hunched over in a high-performance tunnel tent peeing into a 20oz camp bowl and I’m thinking, “Not bad, Hannah!”

Several hours earlier, Mikael and I had left the outstanding Swedish luxury of the visitor center at Grövelsjön, a 2000 sq km wilderness on the border with Norway, to ski and haul arctic expedition sleds about 3-4 miles up a small mountain. This was my very first time doing such a thing, and in all honesty, it all felt perfect. The right challenge for the right year of my life, with the right man to lead the way. There was also this overwhelming sense, as my poles and skis plowed up, that this was the unexpected and surprising culmination of my five years of backcountry training.

We ascended the ridgeline to find the other side in a whiteout. Descending now, I followed Mikael away from the red cross-marked path. I thought, “Where is he going?” A figure moving determinedly, yet mysteriously in a white field, “What possibly can he see there that he can’t see here,” I thought. Snow upon snow.

Alas, a site in the blank whiteness was selected, and Mikael directed the rapid setup with precise direction, that’s the 20 years of arctic experience and the 10 years of adventure fatherhood talking.

“Now put on those big gloves, love. And now the biggest parka and the fur hat. Now that you’re not skiing the cold can take you out.” BUNDLED TO THE MAX, I stepped out of my skis to fall through a meter of snow. I post holed around the tent site heaving and shoveling, following his instructions, hoisting and lurching until the tent was…set up!

Soon enough, we were inside the tent haven messing about with voluminous piles of gear while Mikael futzed around with the wrong stove piece and still managed to boil snow to refill our thermoses. “Time to hydrate, now,” he said, passing me Nyponsopa, a Swedish soup of rose hips.

Hence, the peeing in a tent, which is by no means my first time, but maybe the most high stakes! Holding my bowl of pee over Mikael’s sleeping head, I suppressed my laughter and reached out of the tent to make the disposal on the snow outside. I pulled up my three layers of ultra-performance base layers and my head hit the tent roof creating a tiny shower of iced condensation (from our breathing) that snowed down on me. Some particles hit Mikael’s face poking out through his polar sleeping bag, which he then tightened around his nose like an aperture.

Because we are managing on this absurdly unlevel snow pack it takes a lot of finagling to get back into my indescribably comfortable “cold sleep system:” which consists of the necessary combo of two ultra sleeping bags, and two sleeping pads. I’m wearing his borrowed down booties, and they are divine. I’m smiling ear to ear because it’s the longest period of sleep, having just peed, that I get to be cozied up as the winds whippy dippy (Mikael’s words) the tent walls.

13 hours of perfected slumber later we both awoke to a red glowing tent of late morning winter sun. And awoke too to the best versions of ourselves.

“This is the life, eh?” He says, attempting to give me a little peck across the piles of stuff.

“Did you sleep comfy womfy, bibbly wibbly?” He says, “Here’s your skibbity-dibbly, love. Don’t spilly-willy.” And so it goes, an outing with the very serious Arctic explorer.

One year ago, before I had ever traveled with Mikael, he said, “I want you to experience this arctic world.”

“Oh ya? Tell me why” I said.

“It’s brutal. It’s beautiful. And when you’re done you will get a boost of life.”

To me, adventure girl, those were the most romantic words ever spoken.

And he sure delivered.

Thank you, Mikael.