Winter in Sarek, Sweden

During an 8 day winter cross-country ski tour through Sarek National Park, the wildest Arctic valleys of Scandinavia, we were hit by one of the strongest storms recorded in the area at that time of year, forcing us to spend nearly three full days in our Hilleberg tents, battling wind gusts of up to 45m/s. Although this trip was at the beginning of April, in these parts of Northern Sweden, this is still deep midwinter, and temperatures of down to -25c and colder are to be expected. This storm, however, was incredibly mild, hovering around 0c, which made the situation all the more challenging. Heavy, wet snow that threatened to crush the tents, us getting wet within seconds of being outside to shovel off the snow, and the big snow wall that we built to protect us from the winds kept melting and collapsing. Waking up on the third day, and not hearing the consistent, deafening roar that had tormented us before, was initially a moment of pure joy, before we saw just how much snow had piled up on and around our tents, skis, and pulkas - requiring hours of shovelling.