From Alta in Norway, I went to Kiruna, Sweden.
It's not that far away (in relation to usual distances between places in northern Scandinavia), but I took the long way round, stopping in Norway's and Sweden's capital cities along the route.
There are more direct ways between Alta and Kiruna (such as using the bus to Narvik and then the train to Kiruna), but initially I hadn't planned on visiting Kiruna.
I had planned to go to Umnäs. And that's about twice as far from Kiruna and difficult to get to from Alta with public transport.
As in the previous years, I wanted to visit Kenneth and Catte for a few days.
Partly to talk about dogsledding (past tours and the recent trip), relax for a few days and maybe go cross-country skiing again.
I had booked my return flight to Stockholm, left a few days gap and then booked my flight home from Stockholm, assuming that I'd fly up to Hemavan (nearest airport to Umnäs) from there.
But then Constanze checked with Kenneth and Catte and it turned out that they were away on some skiing holiday during that time.
It didn't make much sense to go to Umnäs, only to stay in their guest house.
As a result, Constanze booked a flight home directly after the dogsledding trip. I had already booked my flights to Stockholm and then a flight back home six days later.
While I could have booked an earlier flight home, the original flight was non-refundable. And I had already applied for the vacation days as well, so it didn't make much sense to fly home early and stay there for a few days.
I looked for things to do in Sweden and decided to continue doing something snow related, but this time involving something noisier than dogs - I went snowmobiling.
Looking for a three-day tour somewhere (and one that covered a bit of distance), I found one in Kiruna.
I booked a flight up to Kiruna, but that made getting there a long trip.
I've almost been to Kiruna for the last three years.
Jukkasjärvi, where the icehotel (not to be confused with the snowhotel in Kirkenes, which I visited this year) is located, is less than 20 km away. And I visited the icehotel in the previous three years. But then, there never was a reason to continue to Kiruna.
This time, it made sense to go to Kiruna. If only because that's where the airport is located.
Technically, I could have avoided Kiruna again, as the snowmobiling company is in Laxforsen, which is right next to Jukkasjärvi. But I have no dislike regarding Kiruna, so I stayed there for a night before driving to Laxforsen.
However, Kiruna is a mining town, so while it's ok, it's not a beautiful place (and I only spent the night there). Not much to say about it. But they have a nice way of putting small decorative objects (like these concrete ptarmigan) in various places.
Before driving to the snowmobiling place, I made a detour to see some rocket science.
A bit outside of Jukkasjärvi, there's the Esrange Space Center.
You can't enter the actual launch site (safety area a), but there's a small visitor center at the entrance.
It's only a single room, but it is surprisingly interesting.
Most of the rockets (and also the balloons - they have about as many high-altitude balloons launches starts as they have rocket launches) essentially go directly up and down. They are not intended to go into orbit, but are sounding rocket that go straight up (or at least as straight as possible), do whatever they need to do once they are high enough, and then fall down.
To enable that, a large area north of the launch site is somewhat restricted. You can normally pass through those areas, but you should not be there on days where there are rocket launches, as you don't want to have rocket parts fall on you (as low as the probability might be).
And it's not only the rocket launches that might cause stuff to fall down. Some of the balloons might drop things as well. Fast things.
An interesting exhibit was this supersonic 'lawn dart'.
They wanted to do some tests on how to change the sonic boom that supersonic planes of the future might make.
Building a supersonic plane, or even a smaller model plane capable of supersonic flight, is difficult and expensive.
But, as Felix Baumgartner has shown, you can also reach supersonic speeds if you drop down from a high-altitude balloon.
At Esrange, they test profiles of potential supersonic planes by building a model without any engine, attaching it to a balloon, lifting it to some high altitude and letting it drop. (In most cases, there will be other balloons at different heights with microphone arrays, to get good data of the supersonic boom when the 'plane' passes by.)
As far as I could make out, there's no attempt to brake the drop load before it reaches the ground (I didn't see any references to braking parachutes or something like that), so what ends up on the ground is somewhat twisted.
(Which is also an incentive not the be in the safety zones shortly after a rocket or balloon launch.)
Something I found surprising (at least at first - it makes a lot of sense after a bit of thought) was a small element of a satellite module.
The detail was this:
The individual elements were connected with RS-232-style connectors. I didn't see it in enough detail, but on the picture, it looks like a DA-15 connector, like the joystick port that old PCs used to have.
Connectors like that haven't been used in consumer products for ages. Even the ribbon connectors, where you have a plug and a socket are getting rarer. Increasingly, especially with laptops, you directly insert the end of a flatband cable into a socket.
And here we, literally, have space-age rocket science. And that still uses connectors that elsewhere have been phased out a quarter of a century ago.
It makes sense, though. Rocket launches aren't smooth events and the payload will be shaken around. So something that can be properly screwed together is a better choice than something simply being plugged in and can shake loose.
After the visit to Esrange Space Center, it was time for the snowmobile tour.
As far as winter related events go, it was petty much post-season already around Jukkasjärvi.
That's partly, of course, because April is at the end of the winter season anyway. But also, because most tourist activities in this area are aimed at visitors to the icehotel. And the annual icehotel had closed a week earlier. (Which is also the reason why I didn't have a look at the rooms there this year.)
Without the annual icehotel in Jukkasjärvi, there aren't many visitors in the area, so it doesn't make much sense for nearby tourist companies to offer their tours. (In fact, my snowmobile tour was next to last for the season, with only one shorter tour after that.)
We were only a small group. In addition to me, there was only one other client, an exchange student from Singapore (he was studying in Stockholm and used the vacation period to see a bit more of Sweden) and the guide.
Weather was fine on the first day, so we took it easy.
Or, at least tried to. Or, possibly the other way round, we had to.
Trails were mostly across lakes and on wide trails, so it should have been an easy drive.
There were some areas where there was a bit of overflow, but that's easier to deal with on a snowmobile than it is with a dog sled. (You don't worry much about the traction belt getting wet.)
But there were some lakes where the snow had almost fully been blown away, so the surface was sheer ice.
And one issue with that is that the snowmobile, even with the wide rubber belt below, doesn't get good traction on that. We clients both got stuck at different points on a lake. The snowmobile sat there, the snowmobile belt was spinning, but we didn't move at all.
(For some reason, the snowmobile moved a bit when in reverse gear. The solution was to slowly back up to the nearest snow patch and then continue driving from there.)
There's another issue associated with driving on ice (or areas with only a thin snow layer): Overheating
Like cars or motorbikes, snowmobiles need to be cooled. While they usually operate in cold environments, the difference in outside temperature isn't that significant for an engine.
But unlike cars or motorbikes, snowmobiles aren't cooled by the airflow.
The cooling unit is below the snowmobile and it is cooled by snow.
Usually, when driving, the belt throws some snow onto the 'underbelly' of the snowmobile and that cools the engine.
Mostly, this works well. It's a snowmobile. It's designed to run on snow.
On icy surfaces, however, not enough snow is thrown onto the underside of the snowmobile. And the snowmobile engine overheats.
That was more a problem for our guide than for us. He was pulling a trailer behind his snowmobile, so his engine had more work to do and overheated faster.
It didn't make a difference, though. When his engine got hot, we all needed to stop for a while and wait for it to cool down again.
Which was, initially, after every single lake.
But that only happened during the first two hours of the tour.
After that, we spent more time on snowy forest paths. And we also did stay closer to the edge of the lakes, where the snow hadn't been blown away as much as in the middle of the lakes.
I hadn't noticed that we had been driving through the Esrange safety zone. But there weren't any rocket or balloon launches on that day or the next, so we were allowed to do that.
Once we were on the other side of the 'rocket range', we stopped for lunch.
The weather was great, so we went into full 'outdoor barbeque mode'
The guide even had a complete outdoor grill with him. He even had a special compartment built into his snowmobile trailer to store it.
Initially he had just marked a rectangular area on the floor and gave us shovels to dig a hole there. Presumably to have some wind shelter for the grill and provide us with 'snow benches' along the edge.
As the snow happened to have the right consistency to come out in stable blocks, the activity almost automatically turned in a version of igloo-building.
Instead of throwing the snow from the hole somewhere into the woods, we started stacking the blocks on the side of the hole.
We neither had the right shape for the hole (round), nor did we have the right sort of snow blocks (slightly slanted) to make an igloo. And we reached the forest floor long before we had enough snow blocks in any case. So, all we managed to do was a little snow wall.
It still was fun to do, even though it meant that we couldn't really sit on the side of the hole, as it was full of snow blocks. Didn't matter though, as we all ate while sitting on our snowmobiles anyway. (A lot better padded. And you don't get cold and wet in the back.)
The guide then started the grill the old fashioned way. Basically the way everyone used to do it decades ago, until someone decided that it is incredibly dangerous and you will die a horrible death if you ever do it. (I do not deny that it is riskier than using safety solid fuel firestarters and a few twigs and small branches. But current safety tips make it look like any other method will always kill you or at least engulf you in a big ball of fire. In fact, it rarely ever does.)
But if you are traveling with snowmobiles, you happen to have some gasoline available. And a quick way to light a fire is still to pour some gasoline over the logs and light that. (To avoid making the guide seem irresponsible - he lit it with reasonable caution. He dowsed a small stick in gasoline, set fire to it and then threw it on the grill. He didn't try to light the gasoline soaked logs on the grill directly. In any case, nobody got burned. And we quickly had a fire.)
We made some proper burgers during that lunch. Grilled meat patties, grilled bacon, melted cheese, toasted bread buns (I don't recall whether we had tomato slices as well), topped with pickles and various sauces.
After lunch, we drove on for a bit, until we reached Övre Soppero where we spent the night in a guesthouse.
It's a small town (about 200 inhabitants), so there aren't many local attractions.
They do have a quick charging station for electric cars (which they seem to be proud of - there's even a sign on the main road pointing to it, so you can't miss it). I am not sure however, whether this is a good sign or a bad one. On one hand, it's nice that even a place that's hardly a center of modern technology has a proper quick charging station for electric cars. On the other hand, however, I can't shake the feeling that someone with an electric car once got stuck there and had to spend a couple of hours in Övre Soppero while waiting for the car to recharge on a regular power outlet. And subsequently vowed that this should never happen to anybody ever again.
(Ok, that's unfair. And it's nothing more than an impression I had. There's no reason for me badmouthing the village. And it's ok for a night.)
Next morning, we set out for a long distance drive.
Weather reports were good for driving, bad for sightseeing.
We were heading for a mountain plateau and it would be windy, cloudy and snowing, but not foggy.
Windy doesn't matter much on a snowmobile (unless you are heading into a full storm). Any wind will be trivial compared to the headwind. And snow would allow us not to worry about some lakes on the second half of the route, as we wouldn't need to go over sheer ice.
The downside, however, was that we would not see much of the mountain scenery around us. (Which, I was assured, is amazing and impressive.)
Most of the day was spent driving the snowmobiles.
We considered a lunch break at some point, but decided against it.
It would have been an outdoor lunch for the sake of having an outdoor lunch. We decided to skip lunch, drive on, and have an early and long dinner at the cabin instead.
All we did was a short coffee break from the thermos. And then drove on.
It was a long drive through the mountains and then an equally long drive south to the cabins, so we didn't go for many detours.
Only when we came close to the cabin, on the last ten kilometers or so, did we deviate from the optimum path a bit and went through some forest sections.
And I don't mean following a snowmobile trail through a forest, but driving right through the forest, making our own way through the trees. It was fun, as by that time we had reasonable control over our snowmobiles. And any gap between trees that the guide could get through with his trailer behind the snowmobile, were gaps that we would fit through easily.
It was still a section where we needed to pay attention to what we were doing and to be alert. A nice contrast (and wake-up call) after hours of straight 'distance-devouring' snowmobiling.
And nobody hit any tree, so things turned out well.
Our destination were a couple of cabins, not that far from Laxforsen, where we had started the tour.
The whole group of buildings (one large community cabin and a number of sleeping cabins) is owned by the snowmobiling (and dogsledding) company.
The direct distance back to our starting point is about 7 kilometers (and the distance to the icehotel is roughly 8 kilometers).
It makes a lot of sense from a business point of view.
Most of the customers they have during the seasons are in the area because of the icehotel.
And some (maybe most) of them have never done snowmobiling or dogsledding (or similar activities) before.
Having a place for overnight guests that is not too far from the starting point is practical.
It's sufficiently far away that you get a feeling of being somewhere remote and 'out there'.
And you don't have to go there directly. There are various routes and trails that allow you to offer (depending on client's interest and mode of transport) tours with different lengths and difficulties.
And you can make tours asymmetrical.
While that was a different tour operator, I once went for a 'northern lights watching' snowmobile tour in that area. We didn't get to see any northern lights, but we drove around for a while and then had a nice dinner in some wilderness hut. Driving back from the hut took less than half the time.
At the beginning of a trip, everybody is keen on driving. But once the excitement is over and everyone had something to eat and to drink, most people want to go back to their hotel and get some sleep. Having a place that is not far away and allows you a long drive to get to, but also a short drive to get back from, is convenient.
And, after all, many people who come for the icehotel haven't done anything like that before and some might not be happy at a 'wilderness camp' at all.
It makes things a lot easier if you can drive them back with a snowmobile to 'civilization' in less than 15 minutes.
We had the place to ourselves for our late lunch / early dinner, but later on a group arrived with their dogsled teams.
(Side note: Getting water from the lake and bringing it up to the cabins is so much easier when you have a snowmobile available...)
To make life easier for novice dogsledders, they have two rows of dog-houses close to the cabins, so they don't have to worry about stake-out lines.
Somewhat unusually, they always have two dog-houses back to back, with their entrances facing in opposite directions. I've never seen a set-up like that before, but then again, why not?
Next morning, we headed back to our starting point.
As a close-up of the trail map shows, we didn't go by any direct route, but had a few detours and back-and-forth sections, in order to avoid having a third day tour that was over in ten minutes.
Still, we only drove for an hour or so, before the tour was over.
But then, it was a sunny day again and we drove over all kind of tracks and terrain, so it was a fun morning.
It was noticeable along the track that there have been a lot of snowmobile tours going along this route.
Many trees along the way gave the impression that they were specifically cut, so that snowmobile windscreens wouldn't hit some branches (or maybe snowmobile windscreens had hit the branches sufficiently often to break all those branches).
At some place the trees got close, but didn't pose an obstacle to the snowmobiles.
As mentioned before, we got a bit of everything. Lakes, wide forest trails, twisty forest trails, flat areas, steep climbs and descents,
A bit like watching an action movie with a bowl of popcorn in front of you.
Not particularly challenging, but strangely comfortable, enjoyable and satisfying.
It was, however, clear that the season was ending and our guide was keen on heading home.
We were his last tour for the season (the final tour was guided by someone else), so he planned to start to drive his camper van back home the following day (he wasn't from Sweden and had a long drive ahead). He wanted to start packing and also go to the shops to buy provisions and stuff to bring back home.
Hence, he wanted to finish the tour as early as possible.
(I'm not complaining, by the way. The tour description made clear that the tour would finish around 10 am. It wasn't like we had expected a full day's driving in any case. And the morning drive, although short, was great.)
Daily distances were as follows:
| Date | From | To | Distance |
| 09.04.2025 | Laxforsen | Övre Soppero | 69.92 |
| 10.04.2025 | Övre Soppero | Tour Cabins | 157.73 |
| 11.05.2025 | Tour Cabins | Laxforsen | 24.79 |
| Total | 252.45 | ||
And this is the trail map:
I had one more thing planned after the tour, but that didn't work out.
I knew that, even with returning all the snowmobiling gear, having a shower and a shave and a farewell coffee, I would be done with the tour by noon.
And my flight to Stockholm was around 9 pm, so I had a lot of spare time to spent in the area.
Visiting the icehotel was not an option, as that had already closed for the season (and having yet another look at the Icehotel 365 didn't seem worth it).
I had already seen the main sights in Kiruna (including the Sami museum) and I've already driven to the Esrange visitor center as well.
Which didn't leave me much to do.
But, as I mentioned, Kiruna is a mining town and LKAB (the huge mining cooperation, which, while not actually in a legal or commercial sense, de-facto owns the town) offers a tour into their mine.
It is supposed to be kind of ok-ish. You don't see any mining operations (or even get near it), but they have a museum 540 meters below ground (on a level that hasn't seen mining for a long time now - the actual mining is about three times as deep now). But then, it seems to be a decent museum and even when having the 'deepest sleep' in a slate mine in Wales, I was (and that's an arguable number) 'only' 419 meters underground.
And, not to forget, I had nothing else to do that afternoon.
Unfortunately, about an hour before the tour started, I got a mail saying: "We regret to inform you that the guided mine tour you booked to LKAB's Visitor Centre ... unfortunately has to be cancelled. Because we have problems with the bus and there is no replacement bus that is allowed to go down the mine."
Which meant I had to spend a lot of time walking around Kiruna, having lunch, walking around some more, drinking some coffee, walking to the next coffee place and so on.
Though I have to say that a nice thing about Kiruna is that they have some rest areas in their malls, that have electricity, free WLAN and little tables for laptops. Which means that you can sit there (without even having to buy coffee once per hour) and get to work. As a result, a bit of this trip description was already written while I was still on vacation.
And I managed to spot the golden egg of Kiruna while walking around.
It is a (supposedly) functional little sauna (I didn't go and give it a try). And it's in Kiruna for some reason.
I am intentionally a bit vague about that, as information about the Egg seem to be contradictory.
I remember reading that it was initially set up in Kiruna, but was intended to be moved around to all kinds of places as a 'surprise attraction' (following the concept of a pop-up store, but hotter).
And it seems to have gone to a number of places, though it seems that it was in many places more as an art piece than as a useable sauna. And supposedly it went permanently to an art museum in Stockholm in 2022. (Which probably gives a new lower limit for the duration of 'permanently'.)
According to other articles, the Golden Egg was always a "commemorative social sculpture for the town" of Kiruna. Which would make it a highly localized artwork. Which, in turn, raises the question why it spent so much time in other places. (It seems strange to say "Here's an art object specifically for the inhabitants of Kiruna. It's now in Paris.")
Given the usual quality of web journalism, an article stated that "the egg-shaped form is intended to make reference to the climate", because, seemingly, nothing symbolizes the climate as well as an egg-shape. (Other articles go with the somewhat more plausible explanation that the egg references the rebirth of the city of Kiruna on a different location. Which has the added advantage that this matches what the artists said about the sculpture. They made some remarks about climate as well, but not in relation to the shape of the object.)
Anyway, I might not have noticed the egg if the mine tour had not been cancelled.
After another coffee or two, it was time to go to the airport and, after some more coffee, catch my plane.
And that's it about the 2025 dogsledding and snowmobile trip.