1000 km in 21 days, self supported ✅️
Those numbers have been my focus for quite some time now. Early this year, I was looking for a big endurance goal. This one had been floating around for some time. It seemed like a cool idea - taking something I love and have done a lot of, namely long distance hiking ("thru hiking") to a bit of an extreme, make it a challenge. It never felt entirely possible - it requires averaging 47.6 km a day, which is technically an ultramarathon every day for three weeks straight, although walking not running, but with a backpack. Plus, that includes town/resupply days, days with harder terrain, bad weather days... It seemed crazy until I did that three day test hike in Scotland in the spring. After that, it still seemed crazy, I just thought that maybe I could do it anyway. But I couldn't possibly have imagined back then what the actual thing would be like. I'm proud of the numbers, but I'm more proud of what it took to get there.
In these three weeks, I saw everything from the lowest lows to the highest highs. So many times, I thought the goal was out of reach for good. There was one specific moment, 13 days in, where I realised I wasn't going to give up. After that, I kept going even when it felt impossible, when I couldn't, when I thought I knew for sure the goal was out of reach. So many days finished after 11 pm, 15 or 16 hours after I started walking. Days on end with wet feet, hours without a single stop because the mosquitos were eating me alive, knee deep bogs, and on one occasion, around midnight, finding myself on top of a sheer cliff instead of the trail. Then again, there were days when I still felt incredible 40 km and 1,500m of elevation gain into the day, days when I couldn't believe the views and wildlife (spot the reindeer!), that time I crested a pass at 11 pm to see a whole new mountain skyline spread out before me, the entire sky on fire in sunset colours; the feeling of getting to a cabin just as a downpour starts and making dinner while the wind whips the windows with rain.
Nothing could have prepared me for the terrain, all above the arctic circle. At lower elevations, it was unlike anything I've ever seen before, swampy forests full of mosquitos and overgrown trails; and high up, rocky mountains, often crossing massive boulder fields for hours at a time. Pictures 5 and 6 are both "the trail". Picture 9 kind of sums up some sections of the hike: trail? Yes. No. Maybe, if you're lucky. And then again, other days held miles and miles of perfect single track. I'm not sure anything will ever live up to the feeling of crossing five mountain passes in a single day, of leaving one mountain range and climbing into the next one in the span of a few hours, of hiking deep into the night under the midnight sun, of seeing the distance I just traversed with my own feet since I woke up this morning on a map. I definitely could have picked an easier trail for this whole endeavour, but I wanted to do the thing that inspired me most, and despite cursing the trail many, many times, I'm glad I ended up where I did. I did most of these miles on the Nordkallotruta/Nordkallotleden/Kallotireiti/Arctic Trail, and it was challenging but beautiful and altogether worth it.
Another less happy result of my high mileage was that I left behind anyone I met within a few hours at most, in a rather quiet place to begin with. Nevertheless I crossed paths with some incredible people, and thankfully had a lot of emotional support from some of my favourite humans back home, haha (extra shout out to Ben for keeping me on my feet as usual).
Altogether, this was certainly the hardest (physical) thing I've ever done, but it was also an incredible experience, and one I'm going to remember for a long time.
