Our original hiking plan for this August was a one-week trip to Jotunheimen national park in Norway. With the start date only days away, me and my partner Rebecka decided to heed the weather warnings and change our plans. We’ve been looking forward to visiting Jotunheimen for years, and we didn’t want to do it during a week of constant downpours and non-existent views.
Instead, we set our sights on Vålådalen nature reserve, just three hours from home, where the forecast looked much better. Vålådalen is a classic hiking destination in the Swedish mountains. At its heart lies a large valley with old-growth forests, surrounded by some of the most beautiful fjäll in Scandinavia, and the large tourist station that serves as the starting point for most visitors is easily accessible by car and bus. Despite that, neither of us had visited it before. I’ve become a little bit obsessed with visiting all of the cabins belonging to the Swedish Tourist Association (STF), collecting a cloth cabin patch as a memento from each one, and I drew up a route that would allow us to visit four of them on our hike in and around Vålådalen. Five, if you count the Gåsen cabin, which was shut down last year.
The route is a variation of the classic route Vålådalsfyrkanten, with a detour to the closed Gåsen cabin to the west, and a loop around the Anaris mountains to the east. It looks like a fish on the map, so we’ve dubbed the route Vålådalsfisken (the Vålådalen fish).
Day 1
August 13, 2024 (24 km)
We got going around three in the afternoon after lunch at Vålådalen mountain station, where my mother worked for one season in the early 1980’s. After one kilometer, we realized that we had hiked in the one direction and had to double back. Once we got on track again, I tried to catch a piece of cheese Rebecka tossed me with my mouth, and managed to punch myself with the grip on my hiking stick, giving me a split lip. Not the most auspicious start, but all was forgiven once we reached the tree line and got views over the Vålådalen valley behind us. To me, lush forest valleys are best experienced at a distance. At least during mosquito season.
We arrived at the STF Stendalsstugorna cabins just past seven, after 14 kilometers of hiking. The main cabin was rebuilt from the ground-up in 2014 after the old one burned down. It seems comfortable and convenient with its multiple modern gas stoves, solar panels and a massive deck facing south, but it lacks the coziness of the classic STF cabins. I added another cabin patch to the collection and got a quick chat with the cabin host before we continued.
West of Stensdalsstugorna, the trail climbs up to a 1 000 meter plateau between the peaks Tobbege and Stäntja, with beautiful views on all sides. On our left, Lill-Stensdalsfjället basked in the last sunlight of the day as we made camp. The clear sky meant that we could spend the evening with the vestibule of our Hilleberg Helags 3 tent rolled up and tucked away until it was time for bed. Neither of us had any regrets about our change of plans.
Day 2
August 14, 2024 (34 km)
The 14 kilometers from Stensdalsstugorna to the Gåsen cabin are some of the prettiest 14 kilometers I’ve ever hiked. From the moment we packed up our tent east of Stäntja to us arriving at Gåsen a few hours later, we had stunning views over the surrounding mountain tops, culminating in the panorama you get over Helags and Sylarna from the shoulder of the mountain Gåsen just northeast of the cabins. Lovely stretch of trail.
The Gåsen STF cabin closed permanently on January 1 this year, to reduce the disruptions to the reindeer in this part of Jämtlandsfjällen. One room in the main cabin is still left unlocked for emergencies, so we had a peek inside. Seeing Gåsen for the first time made me regret not visiting it while it was still open. It’s a spectacular location, and still well worth a detour for the views alone, even if you have to spend the night in a tent instead of a cabin.
From Gåsen, we turned east into the Härjångsdalen valley and started the descent back into Vålådalen, with more great views over the pearl necklace of lakes in the bottom of the valley. We hiked a little too fast and too far, though. I wanted to get to the Vålåstugorna cabins before seven to make sure I’d be able to buy my cabin patch before the store closed for the day. We made it just in time, but it wasn’t worth ending the day with a relentless march to meet a self-imposed deadline. The keepsakes from the hike aren’t more important than the hike itself.
The cabin host in Vålådalsstugorna recommended tent sites a few kilometers further down the trail, but when we got there, they were already occupied. Then the rain caught up with us. Faced with the choice between a tent site right next to the trail or a potentially nicer tent site further ahead but with a wet Shiba Inu in the tent, we chose the former. By then, we were all pretty wiped. Fortunately, a patch wasn’t the only thing I picked up in the cabin shop. When you drink it in the tent after a long day on the trail, Carlsberg is, in fact, Probably The Best Beer In The World.
Day 3
August 15, 2024 (40 km)
As you can see by the number above, day three went long. Too long. Vålåstugorna to the Lunndörrstugan STF cabin was a pretty stretch of trail, especially with the view into the U-shaped valley Lunndörren towards the end. We arrived around lunch and discovered that the cabin host was out on a hike, so I missed out on my cabin patch from Lunndörrstugan. Probably karma for my insistence on us arriving in time for the previous cabin the day before. The cabin hosts are always present in the morning and evening to help visitors, but can be out exploring in the middle of the day. Me and Rebecka have talked about volunteering for it some future summer season.
After Lunndörrstugan, the trail continues to one of the most famous locations in Vålådalen nature reserve: The gravel pyramids in Gröndalen. The landscape here has to be seen to be believed. It was formed during the end of the last ice age, when the ice sheet covering Northern Europe melted. The entire valley looks like a sandbox for giants. As we entered Gröndalen and took aim on the mountain pass that would take us to the Anaris cabin, we passed near the site of the 1978 Anaris disaster, in which eight skiers lost their lives to a sudden winter storm. There’s a commemorative cross marking the site of the accident by the old winter trail, but we left that for another visit to Vålådalen.
Instead, we took on the 300 meter ascent to the pass between Stor-Anahögen and Aaresketjahke. After a short break to admire the view over Gröndalen behind us, we continued south into Hällådalen and towards Anaris, which had already started to don its fall colors. I did get a cabin patch there (depicting a trout – fitting given what we’ve named our route), and we had a chat with the very friendly cabin host. I read a feature recently saying that Anaris is one of the least visited STF cabins, where days can pass without any visitors, but this evening, there were no less than eight hikers there at once. Me and Rebecka were the only ones not staying the night.
We wanted to be back by the car pretty early the next day, so we continued a few kilometers up to the pass between Kraapa and Kruptjie, where we set up our camp. The smart move would have been to make camp before we reached the pass, to get more shelter from the wind, but we were too tired to care.
Day 4
August 15, 2024 (27.2 km)
We had planned to make an early start on the fourth and final day, but not quite as early as 5:30, which was when Rebecka woke up to rain splashing her in the face. The wind had turned during the night and was pummelling the tent from the north with gusts up to ~20 m/s, pulling one of the ground pegs lose. The large stones I had placed on the south-facing pegs, now downwind, helped little. We decided to skip breakfast in the tent and quickly packed up. Taki, to his immense credit, was the least stressed of the three of us.
We followed the summer trail to the Staalavielie rest hut where we planned to have breakfast, but it was occupied both by a German couple that had spent the night and an army of midges. Instead, we continued south on the winter trail towards the Issjödalen valley up to the tree line, where we found a lovely spot with a view over the forest.
I say winter trail because it’s marked as one on the maps provided by Lantmäteriet, the Swedish mapping agency, but the sign by the Staalavielie hut put it down as a summer trail as well. I suspect there was a summer trail there at some point, since the path following the winter markings was pretty well trodden in spots, but there were no traces of wooden planks covering the many marshlands we had to cross.
It was a relief to reach the proper summer trail by Issjön, where we took a moment to inspect the royal hunting cabin before we followed the luxurious forest trail back to our car by Vålådalens fjällstation.
Do we recommend the Vålådalsfisken route to others? Yes! We got to hike through the old-growth forest in the heart of the nature reserve, but also experienced the wide-stretched views from Gåsen to the west (head of the fish) and the dramatic mountain passes around Anaris to the east (tail of the fish). Our big mistake was to do it in just four days. According to our phones, the route is about 120 kilometers. Five to seven days would have made more sense, and been a lot more enjoyable.
Still, Vålådalen nature reserve made a good first impression on us, and we’ll definitely be back. Maybe in winter next time.