Swedish North. Wilderness and the water
We’ve made a reconnaissance trip all the way to Kiruna and Abisco - to get a feeling of Swedish North. I must say that this was one of my best experience!
We packed our car with camping equipment and went up North, trying to see as much as possible on the trip. It took us 2 weeks both ways, with many stops for one or two nights, to explore the area.
Up there North we took a small road which in the end led us to Ritsen, where STF vandrarhem is placed. It is the only road up there in this national park. We’ve put up our tent there - and the views were magnificent!
Apart from this narrow road there are no other car-accessible parts of this huge wild park. One needs to walk or hire a helicopter.
Just to drive this road gives magnificent views!
While driving there one needs to be careful for there are reindeer and wild animals all around.
We were lucky (some call it bad luck) to experience bad weather while being there - temperature dropped to 8 degrees and rain was pouring on us with clouds obscuring the view. Well, to me this was a good lesson how the summer can look like up there. Two days later the weather turned back to summer mode with 21 degrees and cloudless sky!
This visit gave me a thought - I would like to come back here with lightweight boat, to explore this vast wilderness from the water. The boat must be light enough to carry on shoulders on the parts where white water is too dangerous to sail.
Apart from that I should be able to transport the boat on the car roof - to easily unload and launch her while travelling to Ritsen. There are many sites worth visiting on the way up there - including many rivers and lakes worth spending few days exploring.
While exploring possibilities for such a craft I stumbled upon Cape Falcon kayaks - a place I’ve visited before but forgot about it until now. Skin-on-frame boat seems to be perfectly suited for this type of adventure.
It can be a coincidence but only recently Brian has released plans and video course for building skin-on-frame canoes with his system.
I considered for a while Klepper boats, plastic kayaks, aluminium canoes (I’ve actually tried that near Jokkmokk), pack canoes and inflatable canoes but none of them appealed to me - be it their price, ugliness or the weight of the product. Only skin-on-frame boats hit the nerve in my soul and so I purchased the course from Cape Falcon.
The advantages of such a boat - apart from light weight and beauty of the object - is the fact that it needs no permanent thwarts meaning that one can lay down and even sleep on board. Can be handy if the beach is too rocky or sloped to put up a tent. A bevy bag with mosquito net would be sufficient for spending the night.
And of course I want to build it myself!
While visiting Poland I agreed with my local lumberyard that when the time comes they will prepare green (wet) oak for me so I can rip it into slabs and take them to my steam box to bend the ribs. Since the whole system needs no permanent strong-back nor moulds to bend the ribs I can build the boat in my apartment or in the small workshop nearby. No epoxy nor other nasty chemicals are needed.
What not to like?