Arctic persistence

We sat on top of our sleds waiting for our train, which was now 5 hours late. Staring across the tracks at the landscape. A man-made mountain of spoil. Kiruna is a mining town, and everything here revolves around the iron ore mines. This was the reason for our late train. A mining carriage took priority of the single track, and we had been waiting for it to pass, slowly watching the sun set over the black artificial mountain. It was -10 degrees Celsius, and we were well within the arctic circle – an imaginary line that shows the extent of 24 hour sun and 24 hour darkness.

We waited, and finally the train came. 

The human powered leg of the journey started at Kvikkjokk. It is the start of the King’s trail in the Sarek National Park. That evening we covered as much ground as we could before setting up camp on the edge of the trail. We would have over 50km + to travel to our base camp over the next couple of days.