Snowmobiling in Riksgränsen

I was on a snowmobiling club's trip to Riksgränsen, Sweden last week. And I have to say WOW! It was simply amazing. The fells there are something else compared to the low one's in Finland and you're allowed to drive anywhere, no need to stay on dedicated snowmobiling trails. This means you get to do hill-climbing on untouched snow.

This time there was a lot of snow and it was packed hard with only 5-10 cm of loose snow on top of it. This meant you could basically drive anywhere climbing unbelievably steep and high hills. And there wasn't much of a risk to hit a stone hidden under the snow.

We drove to Riksgränsen on Thursday and arrived at around 10 pm local time. Kari's Ford Excursion did a good job towing all our five sleds on the trailer, no problem there. Only small hick-up was when we started the trip back and the break of one of the trailer's wheels was dragging. After a few kilometers we stopped to check if everything was ok and saw smoke coming from the breaks. A little knocking on the bolts released the break and snow on the rim cooled it down so we were able to continue.

We stayed at Katterjåkk in a new apartment hotel that was opened last year. Another one of the two apartments we had had a sauna so it was ok. The apartments were specified to be for 2+2 but really 3 is the max number of grown ups for one room. Based on the number of sleds on the parking area there were more than twenty other snowmobilers also staying in the Katterjåkk.

But back to the snowmobiling. First day the weather was just great, sun shining all the time. Somehow we ended up driving our sleds to Abisko which made absolutely no sense at all as there was no snow left there. And we even knew it as we saw it the day before when we drove by it in a car. One of the sleds, Pekka's Yamaha Phazer almost died there as the cooling fluid started to boil and and there was a problem with a broken slide runner that ripped the track. Also Kari's Polaris had cooling problems when there was only ice or very icy snow. Anyway after a lunch in a restaurant in Abisko we headed back to fells except Pekka who's Yamaha was broken. In the end Pekka was able to fix it into such a condition that he was able to drive back to Katterjåkk in Riksgränsen on the ice of the lake Torneträsk.

The rest of us drove to Unna Allakas and were planning to drive to see Kebnekaise as against our original thoughts we had been told that it is allowed to drive there if you stay on the trail. Well it was not allowed and we were told so and we had to ditch that plan. Then we ended up spending the rest of the day moving back towards Katterjåkk climbing up nice hills we saw along the trail. The second day started also well as the weather was ok. We headed to northern side of Riksgränsen and basically did hill climbing all the day until early afternoon when we went to Katterjåkk for a lunch and a short break. After the break the weather was turning worse with clouds covering the sky and after an hour of driving it started to snow lightly. After about 2 hours of driving the it started storming and visibility was so lousy we had to quickly head back to Katterjåkk.

As the trip takes about 9 hours from Riksgränsen to Oulu, we didn't do any snopwmobiling on Sunday but just drove back to Oulu. On the way back it was agreed that we will be back to Riksgränsen next year the same time. The only exception to this year will be that we'll leave there already 5 AM on Thursday so we get to drive snowmobiles a little already that evening.