Denmark: Møllehøj (22/28)

We opted to take the Øresund Bridge, instead of the ferry, across from Sweden to Denmark. It’s an impressive engineering feat as the crossing is part-bridge, part-tunnel. We stopped at a viewpoint on the Danish side to take a picture, but unfortunately it’s not possible to capture where the bridge becomes a tunnel without an aerial shot.

Once in Denmark we continued past Copenhagen (saving it for another time) and headed straight for the highest point in Denmark, Møllehøj – the lowest on our list at 171m. We parked in the car park, in front of a grand tower, however the tower built in 1924 now only marks the 3rd highest point in Denmark. More recent measurements granted Møllehøj (a hill located on the neighbouring dairy farm) the title of highest point in 2005. Thus a short walk took us to the commemorative millstone a few hundred meters away.

The next day we headed to the mines at Mønsted Kalkgruber, the world’s largest limestone quarries. Formerly these extensive stone workings provided stone for many local churches and fortifications, but recently they’ve been bought by the state and are now home to many thousands of bats hibernating during the winter months. It’s also the home to large quantities of ‘cave aged’ cheese, being matured, the smell wafting into the surrounding tunnels.

From there we made our way to Esbjerg to see the striking Men at Sea sculpture. Standing at 9m tall, this imposing sculpture can, on a clear day, be seen from ships 10km away. 

We spent the night nearby and in the morning visited Ribe – a pretty, little town of low, pastel coloured buildings and cobbled streets.

Sweden: Kebnekaise (21/28)

First I should give some background to the Swedish highest peak Kebnekaise. The massif is within the Artic Circle near the mining town of Kiruna. There are two summits, only around 500m apart. The Sydtoppen (or south summit) is glaciated whereas the Nordtoppen (north summit) is rocky. A narrow snow/ice ridge connects the two.

The glaciated Sydtoppen has historically always been the highest, scientists from Stockholm University and the Tarfala Research Station have been measuring the height of the South summit semi-annually since 1968. The summit changes in height naturally throughout the seasons by about 3m with the highest value usually in May (after the winter snows) and the lowest in August-September (the end of the summer melt season) (Holmlund 2018).

The graph above shows the elevation of the glacier has varied year to year due to variability in snow conditions and summer melt. In the late 1980s and early 1990s there was a significant increase in winter precipitation and glaciers in Northern Sweden actually thickened. This period ended in 1996 when the winter precipitation decreased and the summer melting increased, leading to the decrease in elevation as the glacier shrank.

Scientists have also been monitoring the shape of the glacier by photogrammetry and found the glacier is thickening at the base of the peak and an abrasion gully caused by climbers is contributing to the erosion — although very minorly compared to weather factors (read more about this here: Holmlund 2018).

The Nordic heatwave in the summer of 2018 caused an extreme elevation loss resulting in the southern summit being a few 10s of centimetres lower than the northern summit for the first time. This made international news and became a clear example of the effects of climate change.

Our Journey

Having driven from Norway into Sweden we picked up a few supplies, hung out near Kiruna and kept an eye on the weather. We were aiming for a three day weather window but most importantly with the middle day having low winds and clear skies for our summit attempt.

There are a number of different routes discussed online but also in our newly purchased Cicerone book “Climbing Europe’s High Peaks” — which we totally should have bought three months ago!

The two most popular routes both start from the Kebnekaise Mountain Station, which is a Swedish tourist association hut, but before choosing a route we also had to discuss how we were going to get to the mountain station. The hike in is 19km through the valley with basically no elevation change. This seems simple enough but there were another set of variables which we had to consider. The hut is quite expensive and after not being able to get through to make a booking on the phone we decided to camp nearby for free. There is also an option to pay to use the huts’s self catering kitchen or eat meals in the hut, both of which seemed expensive.

We decided naively to camp and cook our own food which meant carrying a tent, roll mats, sleeping bags, stove, pans, 3 days of food on top on winter mountaineering equipment which consists of helmet, harness, crampons, ice axes, metal work and a 60m rope. After attempting to fit all this in our bags I discovered I was going to have to also pack a smaller rucksack to use for the actual summit day.

To reduce the walking their is an option to take a boat to cut out 6km of the path for £30 each or fly in via helicopter for £70. There was also an option to have your rucksack shipped in by helicopter for £25. This was a real case of decision fatigue, so we opted for the simplest and cheapest option - just walk.

This was all going swimmingly until we both started flagging around 15kms. The path got a little rougher and the heavy bags were really weighing us down coupled with walking in stiff winter boots. Conveniently the Scandinavians love a board walk so most of the rough slippery rocky patches and bog could be easily crossed.

After six hours we arrived at the mountain station, set up camp, had an early dinner (I reinstated Olly’s faith in instant mash potato) and tucked in for an early night both feeling tired.

Conveniently the reception of the mountain station had a toilet, drinking water and was open from 6am. By 6:45 we were on the road with our considerably smaller and lighter bags. We had chosen to climb the eastern route, this was the more technical but shorter of the two. Our guide book had effectively said ‘for the love of god do not take the western route, it is bouldery hell’. Our route soon rose up a steep valley, before crossing a worryingly fast flowing river. This was fed by the melting glacier so I was concerned that on returning in the afternoon it might have risen even higher. I put this thought to the back of my mind, we crossed without incident and continued to plough up the incredibly steep but reasonably good path through boulders. This was one of those hills which never seems to end. Eventually, however, it did and we were on a flat plain. We crossed some bouldery ruts which I think must have been formed by the now receded glacier.

At the glacier we roped up and put some extra layers on as the strong winds were pretty nippy. Here we got a good view of the Kebnekaise massif, the summits were enshrouded in cloud so we crossed our fingers that the forecast for clear skies by midday would be correct.

This glacier was quite different to the Großglockner one, I think because there was no snow cover. It was incredibly blue and had a beautiful striped structure. Crossing was simple and we then headed up the snow slope to the left of the summits. In recent years the mountain station has invested in fixed aides so there is now a via ferrata route up the rocky face complete with additional knotted ropes on some of the trickier sections.

We topped out and headed to a little shelter to eat some sandwiches. This simple shelter was refitted in 2004 and stated that it was the highest building on the mountain. We continued up another boulder strewn path which seemed to never end before passing another newer shelter. Obviously they haven’t updated the signage in the lower one. The weather forecast had held true and we could now see the peculiar looking glacial south summit below a clear blue sky. Having stalked the summit on Instagram it can look completely different from day to day depending on snowfall. Any recent snow must have melted leaving an icy blue stratified sharp peak which we needed crampons to climb.

For people not owning crampons the mountain station hired them out and we saw a number of groups swapping hired crampons such that their friends could also climb the last 15 meters. If there had been snow you could more easily crunch your way to the top. There have been fatal accidents here in the past and I can see why, to both the east and the west are sheer drops of hundreds of meters which would fatal if you slipped.

Luckily we didn’t and some friendly Polish climbers who had come up the same route as us took probably our best summit photo yet. We now had our next decision to make, as I discussed before, last August there was a Nordic heat wave and the southern summit glacier melted by a record 4 metres making the northern rocky summit 30cm taller than the icy southern summit.

Our plan was to traverse the snow bridge between south and north summits if we thought it looked within our ability. Having researched this as much as I could online it had looked exposed but OK. However, looking across the 500 metres to the north summit it looked sketchy. It was steep, narrow, exposed, windy and icy. It also looked very tricky to get around the corner of the south summit. We decided this was above our ability, we didn’t really have any way of protecting it with our two ice screws and a slip on the ridge would mean a fall of hundreds of meters.

We were happy with summiting the old south summit and headed back towards the hut. We had a pleasant climb back down the via ferrata and crossed the glacier. This was all fun until we headed back down the incredibly steep valley. Both our knees and feet felt like they had had a real pounding. Eventually we reached the river crossing and as expected it had risen. I was a little unsure but Olly was incredibly chivalrous and got wet feet helping me cross. A couple more painful kilometres we made it back to our tent.

We next had a moral dilemma, both of us were feeling pretty brutalised by the mountain/walk in with heavy bags and were not looking forward to the 19 kilometre walk out. I was keen on getting the helicopter as I have never been in one but Olly felt this was wrong. We consulted our moral guru (Oli Dawson) she said go for it, but we decided to prolong the decision making to the morning. Overnight we decided it wouldn’t sit right from an environmental perspective to get a helicopter when Sweden’s highest peak has lost it’s title due to climate change.

We decided instead to walk but get the boat to reduce the distance by 6km. By the time we had faffed around making this decision we had a pretty narrow time window to get the next boat. Luckily we smashed out 8kms in 2 hours and were 15 minutes early for the boat.

The boat ride was actually quite fun as the captain power slid the little tin boat at high speeds between little islets in the channel. The last five kilometres of the walk were painful but in the end we were content with our many decisions on routes, transport and not crossing the snow ridge.

In reward for walking I had decided we could get reindeer burgers at the restaurant car park. Unfortunately they had stopped serving them but we were able to get reindeer kebab with mash potato and lingonberry jam instead — a traditional Scandinavian dish. In the evening we checked into a campsite to enjoy our first hot showers in 10 days. It rained biblically all night so we had definitely picked the right weather window.

Whilst contently listening to the rain on the roof of the van I did some reading into the research and monitoring of the south summit glacier. I surprisingly found that the latest height measurement taken of the south summit put it at the same height as the rocky northern summit! There was even a 30cm of bonus unconsolidated snow making the southern summit the highest point in Sweden! However, before we celebrate too early that we may actually have climbed the highest peak in Sweden we need to wait for the final measurement at the end of September which records the height at the end of the melting season. What a cliff hanger!

The following day we visited an open air museum on Sami culture. The Sami people live in the northern regions of Norway, Sweden, Finland and parts of Russia, despite only 10% of Sami people being connected to semi-nomadic reindeer herding this is what they are most famous for. The museum had descriptions of the production of handicrafts and other livelihoods undertaken by the Sami people as well as information on the discrimination these people have faced and the abuse by the dominant cultures claiming possession of their lands.

The museum also has a small herd of 16 reindeer which you can feed. We happened to arrive at the museum at the same time as 30 students from the Lund university. We ended up joining their tour and the lecturer mistook us for people working at the centre. We hope this is because we looked outdoorsy and not old.

We also had not received the dress code which we overheard was smart causal. This was quite funny as we watched the students in smart shirts and fancy leather shoes tiptoe around the reindeer poo in the muddy reindeer pen. I think the reindeer had not been fed that day as when we entered they got over excited and there was a stampede. Two managed to escape the pen so we were left to the mercy of the reindeer whilst the keeper went to retrieve the jail breakers. The reindeer were actually not at all aggressive, the only problem was when I held the bag of food above my head they were tall enough to still reach it.

Fun reindeer facts:

• Reindeer can smell lichen through 1m of snow, any deeper and they don’t know where to dig. If during warm winters the snow falls as rain this freezes producing an ice layer which the reindeer cannot break through. This has caused whole herds to die of starvation.

• The antlers fall off and regrow every year. The females keep their antlers longer such that when the males dig holes in the snow to find lichen the females can but them out the way and feed their calves.

• For the first 6 years of a reindeer’s life the antlers regrow back every year but change shape/get larger. After 6 years the shape is fixed and regrows the same for the following years.

• The joints of their knees audibly click as they move around, this helps the heard stay together in thick fog and snow storms.

We then headed southwards stopping at a number of nice park ups overnight. At one I even managed to collect lots of large billberries and lingonberries to have with breakfast. We were also super lucky and very briefly witnessed a faint Aurora, which is surprising considering it was still August.

Our final stop off before heading to the Danish border was the Elk park near Ljungby. This had mixed reviews, I made sure we were their early before the Elk had eaten to much. Olly decided to wait in the van whilst I spent an hour feeding various sized Elks. These seem like gentle giants and can be six times larger than a reindeer. The bull looses his antlers in the winter and just before the rutting in September the velvet sheds from the antlers which looks a little grim.

After ticking off the climbing the peak, seeing the aurora and feeding both reindeer and elks we continued in the direction of the Danish border.

Finland: Halti (20/28)

Docking into Helsinki port, early in the morning and with little sleep, we drove to the outskirts and parked up for a nap. Waking up for a spot of lunch and then a short walk in the nature reserve, whose car park we’d used for our rest. It was a pleasant walk along the river, with the footpath mainly on boardwalks, raising us above the boggy ground underneath.

Next we headed to Rauma, arriving the next day after a quiet lakeside camp. The centre of this Finnish town is a UNESCO World Heritage site preserved as an example of traditional Scandinavian wooden houses.

After a walk around the old town we hit the road and headed north towards the Arctic Circle. We’d chosen a slightly longer route which hugged to coast, trading a longer drive for the maritime views. However this turned out to be a mistake, as even though at times we were only a few hundred metres from the coast we couldn’t see it. Dense, straight rows of pine forest blocked our view on both sides of the road. And so it was for our drive through most of Finland, with straight roads surrounded by pine forest.

We stopped in Oulu for the evening. We’d been keen to visit a Finish sauna and Oulu had an excellent one, on a floating pontoon on a lake in the town. Run by volunteers, it had a small boat pulled with a rope to reach it. It was busy and we had to queue for a short while to be allowed on, mainly because the World Air Guitar Championships were currently being held in Oulu and there was a outing for the competitors at this sauna.

Seating around 15 people, this wood-clad sauna was wood fired with the stove heading stones placed on top and around the chimney. Then you could ladle water onto the stones to create the desired amount of steam. When you’d had enough, you could head outside for an optional plunge in the cold lake, which was bracing but actually quite pleasant.

Continuing our drive north we crossed into the Arctic Circle, but we still had quite a way to go. Halti, the highest Finnish peak, is positioned on the northern Finish-Norwegian border 500km further on. Shortly after we saw our first reindeer, grazing by the side of the road. There are very few wild reindeer and nearly all are farmed for meat and fur.

Halti can be reached via a 3-4 day hike through horrific bog from the Finnish side, or a 1 day hike from Norway. We opted to hike from the Norwegian side, and parked at trail head for the night. The next day our route took us briefly over grassy tundra, before climbing steeply up to a boulder field plateau. We followed cairns then a reindeer fence over the ankle-busting boulders.

Leaving the fence we followed more cairns, up more boulders — accompanied by brief rain showers — to the summit.

The cloud lifted briefly while we were at the summit and we stopped for a little lunch. As the cloud came back in we turned around and retraced our route back across the bleak, grey landscape. As we arrived back at the van we spotted a herd of reindeer grazing ahead.

We spent the evening camped at the end of a fjord, deciding in the morning to head to Sweden via Senja, Norway’s second biggest island. We toured around the island stopping at a number of scenic spots to admire the view.

Finally we took a short hike from the Hesten trail head to a viewpoint overlooking the dramatic Segla peak.

Estonia: Suur Munamägi (19/28)

After completing the Latvian peak, we headed across the border into Estonia for the second peak of the day. We had spent most of the morning driving on dirt tracks or potholed tarmac, so we were very pleased to have shiny new tarmac on crossing the border into Estonia.

In contrast to Latvia and Lithuania, the Estonian peak was actually quite busy. The peak name Suur Munamägi translates to ‘big egg mountain’ as apparently the hill resembles half an egg. We were not sure if we could see this, but maybe this is because the 318m peak is surrounded by trees. We had our photo below the tower then paid the 2 euros each to climb the four floors (we saved a euro each by not taking the lift!). From the top you can see an endless sea of pine trees. There was even a digital info sign where you could send e-postcards.

We drove for a few more hours in the direction of Tallinn before stopping at the nice lake for the night. In the morning we completed the drive to the capital, Olly was heading back to the UK for a couple of days whilst I hung out at an Airbnb.

The main reason for staying indoors was to utilise the washing machine. It was easier said than done to wash and dry everything we own in 36 hours. Before Olly headed to the airport we went and explored the old town. The public transport system is free for residents of Tallinn, we managed eventually to buy tram tickets online. The old town was very pretty with a Russian style cathedral, the bright pink parliament building and lots of quaint cobbled streets.

We decided to skip the local cuisine this time as we had had enough of meat and potatoes so headed for a pizzeria. Later we had more ice-cream which again was very good. The Baltic countries seem to do superb ice cream. Another point of interest is the origin of the Estonian flag which we read about on an info sign near the Hermann Tower. The blue, black and white tricolour was originally the flag of the Estonian Students’ Society and became the national symbol during the independence movement at the end of the 19th century. The colours represent: blue - the bright future and Nordic sky, black - dark past of the nation and soil, white - striving towards enlightenment.

Olly headed off to his flight and a killed a couple of days doing admin. When Olly flew back in and we had a short nights sleep by the ferry terminal before heading over to Helsinki.

We caught the early ferry as it was 1/3 of the price of the later tickets. I was excited the the women’s toilets had a sea view from the cubicle. Olly was less than impressed that the location of the comfy seats was also the location of the disco, where for some reason they insisted on playing very loud 80s power ballads despite it being 7am.

Latvia: Gaiziņkalns (18/28)

We drove from Vilnius to Riga, continuing the theme of exploring the old towns in the Baltic capitals. We arrived in the early afternoon, and after a brief struggle to find some parking we set off on foot.

We wound our way through the pedestrianised centre, stopping to view a couple of cathedrals from the outside.

Then we wandered through the park surrounding the city’s canal (the remnants of the city’s old moat), before stopping at The Freedom Monument just in time to see the changing of the guard.

We left Riga and drove for a couple of hours before stopping at a secluded lake at the end of a gravel road — a nice peaceful stop for the evening.

The next morning we drove to Gaiziņkalns, Latvia’s highest point. Continuing the theme of a convenient car park, a short walk, and a tower on the summit, we took our summit photo and set off for Estonia.