A last minute travel plan change - Kungsleden has to wait

Hi, my name is Rainer

Well, this is my first entry about the different trips i made and still plan to make in the future. And it starts with a last minute change ...
I always rejected to start blogging - having a webpage and photos uploaded to picasa - why put out even more of my private things? But thinking changes and i saw a nice blog from a friend about his trip through India. Instead of writing emails and so on to friends, it's so much more convenient to post a little update from time to time to your blog ...Ok, so i'll try to get this started now.
For the first time, i planned to do a hike with my girlfriend in the northern parts of Sweden. You know, starting 300 km north of the arctic circle in Abisko and hiking parts of the famous Kungsleden trail. (Goggle for "Lapporten" to find pictures about this great area)
We wanted to carry everything from the tent to the food, allowing for reloading some chocolate bars at the huts only. We had everything packed from the milk powder to the outdoor bread, the backpack weight was 20kg and 17kg.As usual we started to do some training the weeks before with hiking every weekend starting with no backpack and ended up with hiking 25km trips with a heavy back pack. Ok, so we felt ready but the weather conditions up in Sweden changed dramatically for the planned trip.Well, if you go there you need to consider the best time. If you like Mosquito, then you have plenty of choice, but we thought we are clever and start at the 3rd of September to avoid them.
Obviously it can get cold there at this time of the year and rain is always an option from time to time. But the forecast was changing to constant rain and snow, 0 to -4 degree Celsius for the next 10 days.

We discussed this like:

Hey, ok we can make it! It will probably be no fun nor will it be relaxing, but we can make it!

But that was not the reason for us going up there, spending our limited vacation days of the year for hiking under constant bad conditions.
So we dropped the plan (let's try next year and a bit earlier) and started to quickly come up with another plan. 

A change from a rough  adventure trip towards  relaxed hiking in the mountains, great food supply, nice weather but still a fantastic nature ...

more next time ...

If you like to check out my photos on picasa, click here.