Talk:Nordkalottleden
How serious an undertaking is it?[edit]
It is difficult to say what is difficult and what is not when you don't have a common baseline. On this trail you are often days from other people and there might be no mobile phone coverage, so you really are on your own. You need to carry food for a week. You might have to find an alternative route because of heavy rain flooding rivers and mires, so you need to know how to read your map, you cannot trust having a hut for every night, and you might get that snowstorm.
When I was in Lapland in winter for the first time, with my scout troop from Turku, one of the groups got caught in a snowstorm above the treeline. Too heavy winds for them to get their tent up, so they spent their night in a hole in the snow, which they covered with the tent fabric – sixteen–seventeen year old city dwellers from the south of the country. We met them the next night: they were exhausted but they laughed when they told about their adventure. I'd say that was an extreme experience, but no one doubted they'd handle it, otherwise they wouldn't have been let there on their own.
Nordkalottleden is not a winter trail, so if you live where you see snow, you should know how to handle the possible around-freezing temperatures. Hard winds, rain and fog might make for real problems unless you know how to handle them – but any serious wilderness backpacker who has done some mountain hiking should have the know-how. If you don't have that know-how, if you panic, if you take stupid risks, then you might be out of luck. So, yes, it is a serious undertaking. But you don't need any special skills, and if you master those ordinary hiking skills (and don't do stupid things), the trail is quite safe. A Norwegian father did most of it, including some of the worst legs, with his two about 12-year old children. They came too early in the summer to one of the high legs, so they had to adjust the route to avoid the worst snow, but I don't think he took any risk by bringing his children there. And a trail where you can take your 12-year olds isn't extreme in my book. (Those three spent a few summers hiking Norway from south to north.)
I think Ikan Kekek hit close to the mark writing "Although the trail is not extreme for one in the Arctic wilderness, hiking it is a serious undertaking and should be treated with all due caution." I'll reword slightly: "Although the trail is not extreme, it is still one in the Arctic wilderness; hiking it is a serious undertaking and should be treated with all due caution." I also don't think you need somebody familiar with the trail; there are few of them and experience from tundra of Alaska or northern Canada would be more than enough.