Getting ready for Sweden.

Less than two weeks to go now getting very excited, I've more or less sorted out what's going in my pack and it weighs just under 18kg. Only thing to add to that is gas once I get to Lulea as you can't take it on aircraft. I'm taking a few things that I wouldn't normally carry, the most important being a Delorme inReach SE tracker so I can let people know where I am and that I'm alright. To charge this I've a small solar panel and a backup battery powered charger, these can also charge my phone. There's no phone signal out in Sarek but I can connect my phone to my inReach which makes writing/reading text messages much easier than using the tiny screen on the inReach. I'll also be using my phone as a GPS this time. I'd normally use a Garmin but the Garmin maps for Sweden cover the northern half of the country and cost £180, a bit overkill for what I want. Viewranger do a free map of the main Sarek Peak and £5 worth of tiles covered the rest of my route, quite a saving. On course I'll be taking paper maps as well, these are at 1:100 000 scale and printed on some very flimsy paper so I'm taking two. 

There are only a couple of bridges in an area about half the size of Scotland so I'm expecting to have to wade quite a lot. To help with this I'm taking a pair of fell running shoes, the idea is to take my boots, socks and possibly trousers off wade across wearing the running shoes and putting the dry stuff back on once across. The fell shoes will dry out much quicker than boots. My sleeping bag is now 25 years old and not as good as it once was, so I've got a new one which is slightly warmer than the old one. Actually the weather and temperature over there has been better than here in Scotland over the last couple of weeks. 

As I'll be solo there's not much point in taking rope and harness and I'm not going to carry an ice axe or crampons. Which means I'll have to keep off the glaciers and stick to the ridges but I think I'll have plenty to climb even without them. I'm still in a bit of a quandary as to which camera to take, I've a DSLR but it weighs a whooping 1.5kg, or I've a small waterproof compact, very light but doesn't have a very good lens. I did think about getting a small bridge camera but decided I couldn't afford it. So I think it will be the compact and accept that I won't get many stunning photo's.