Explore Sweden
Four Seasons in One Race
Susan McKenzie / 13.05.2005
The gear list for the second edition of Explore Sweden reads like an inventory list at an outdoors shop: snowshoes, cross country skis, mountain bikes, kick bikes, kayaks, jumars and crampons, an avalanche shovel, fleece, Gore-Tex, fleece and more fleece. Starting at noon tomorrow (Saturday, May 14th), the thirteen teams competing in the race will cover more than six hundred kilometres of northern Swedish wilderness, through areas in Lappland where the reindeer are calving. They’ll go from winter conditions on the peaks to late spring in the valleys, with snow, rain and fog all weather possibilities.
They will ski and snowshoe through heavy spring snow, bike soft spring trails, navigate through orienteering sections that race director Mikael Nordstrom boasts are “the toughest navigating sections� he’s ever seen (of course, every race director always says the same thing – whose going to design a course that’s a doddle?)
You can’t forget the kayak sections, either. If they’re lucky, they’ll be paddling frigid Class One and Two rapids, but in some spots the water is still frozen. Never mind hike a bike (though they’ll do that, too) – this race guarantees “drag-a-kayak� sections – frozen portages, if you will. “We are the only race in the world where racers must drag kayaks on the ice,� asserts Nordstrom.
The race begins at the foot of Kittelfjall, one of Sweden’s smaller ski resorts. The ski season is closed (but the heli-skiing is supposed to be at its peak this week). The CPs to the summit actually crisscross the mountain, which means teams will have to decide the best route from CP1 to CP2 and then back across to CP3 before moving up and over the mountain before returning to the Hotel Kittelfjall to make the transition to the first of two kayaking sections. This section, which includes some Class 2 rapids, covers 22 kilometres.
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