Route 11 - Sandlågan to Köpmanholmen
Trail Information
Distance: 12.7km
Difficulty: Demanding
Transport: There is a bus stop at Köpmanholmen.
Side Trails & Add-ons
Lake Balestjärnen
From the start of this section, to the side trail to Lake Balestjärnen was about two hours walking. Balestjärnen is a strange location. An alkaline lake surrounded by acidic rocks, the PH of the water means it is toxic to most organisms that live in lakes and generate the murk and algea so it is crystal clear, but it also means nothing lives in it that will decompose the trees that fall in over time. Some have been dated back one to two thousand years. It is difficult to describe, and my mental picture of it from hearing about it bore little connection to reality, it is still a wide deep lake and so the refraction of light means you can’t just see to the bottom, but what you can see is sharp and clear. It is haunting and eerie to see the pristine tree-limbs submerged and know they had been there for decades or centuries.
It was the perfect place to stop for lunch, looking out over the water.
After lunch, I followed the side trail along past the lake and up towards the back of the peninsular. Out here, the sun beat down mercilessly on the bare rocks. A recent fire had killed or stripped much of the vegetation, making the whole area stark. It reminded me a lot of some of the islands in the Gothenburg Archipelago where they are too rocky and too exposed to sustain life. Its a powerful reminder of the danger of forest fires.
Side Trail: Moose Island
Out in the ocean is Moose Island, called that for obvious reasons. I learned that Moose can swim, and that you may well be sailing or motoring around in your boat when you spot and enormous fuzzy head and antlers off the side as a two tonne beast swims past. Or, in winter, simply marches across the ice.
Moose Island is not somewhere many will have visited, needing a boat it is out of range of most hikers and without any inhabitants or water, there is little to bring you there. It was during my visit, deeply deforested due to a tree infection that is so severe they rip up everything that might be infected and let new trees grow in their place.
The only building on the island is a ramshackle community hut.
The Experience
Day 1
Just past the connection of Route 12 and 11, my Turkish friend stopped at a campsite for some food and a break. Like me he had been walking since 5:30 am, but unlike me, he had taken the High Coast trail the whole way and so had had a tall hill to climb, that I’d missed by going along the coast through Paddal.
This slice of the trail was much more what I’d been expecting from the Höga Kusten. Forests, loose stones and tree routes also meant a much slower pace than I’d been doing previously, having completed 17-18km since I started and it was not quite lunchtime. I carried on to the beach and then took the short uphill side trail to Lake Balestjärnen.
When I’d had lunch and got back to the beach, I gave a friend a call who was staying at his family summer house. I arranged to meet on the trail, as he was giving me a boat ride to Moose Island and then onwards to the leading nature reserve, skipping section 10, which was mostly a trip through the town of Köpmanholmen.
It was about an hour and a half walk through the forest, past some deeply shaded glades and across a bridge over a brook before I met my friend, I stopped on one of the streams to fill my water bottle, and slipped on the wet stones, it pays to be more careful than you think in the forest. The first forty minutes are a steep uphill hike, so ensure your shoes are tight and your pack is well strapped on, as you will be scrambling for some of it.
Coming from the north, this is the first time you encounter a field of loose round stones, created by the most recent ice age. It is treacherous to walk across with a heavy pack, and is peculiar, giving the impression more of crossing a builders merchants yard than something in the middle of a forest. It is not something I’ve ever encountered before.
He had to meet me on the trail, as there is no way to know where his turn off is from the Höga Kusten trail. The trail to his cabin is not used enough to be worn, nor would they want it to be. His family, like many in Sweden, share the place that his Grandparents build. In this case, created by pushing the cabin out to the desired location on a beach by hand in the middle of winter when the ocean had frozen thick. Heavy machinery can even cross the ice, resulting in some remarkable properties cut off from civilisation and without a boat require hours of difficult hiking to reach.
