Backyard hikeing or discovering your own neighbourhood (picture heavy travel report)
Recently I realised how homeblinded I am. I took a longer route home from the super market and found myself hikeing in a beautiful national reserve located right next to my home. I later spoke to my best friend about this and we decided to take a hike along the Ljungan river. He is born and raised in the area but has never truely explored except by driving alongside it. We decided to keep things simple and do a 24 hour hiking trip along Ljungan along an old hikeing trail created by the swedish unemployment agency in 1982. This thread is intended to encourage people to take a closer look at their own local area and engage in healthy exploration of it. All the pictures are taken with a Sony-Ericsson K550i cybershot camera and I am really surprised by the quality of them and I hope you enjoy them.
Our preperations were kept to a minimum, we both have a decent amount of outdoors experience but this trip was on the most basic level possible. It was only a 24 hour hike so we only needed to carry 3 meals and a tent. It also fit nicely into the weekend since we're both working during the regular weekdays.
Ljungan is a popular recreational area for alot of people living near Sundsvall, the banks are however extremly sharp and high causing long stretches of the river to be completly unexploited even though there are houses located within half a kilometre from it. This provides a huge variation to the hike. Sometimes were we wandering along sand beaches with summer cottages. Other times were we struggling to climb over trees felled by the erosion of the river valley.
The wildlife was a huge surprise, normally you don't notice it but along the way we saw a dragonfly caught in midflight by a bird, minks raiding a birds nest and baby salmons catching flies in a stream. The evening also turned out beautifully, huge amounts of (non bloodsucking) insects swarmed over the river surface. Salmons in the river jumped up and caught them while several bats were flying above us. We really didn't expect to see all this considering the proximity to the city and how little we normally see in our surroundings.
The river itself
The only power transmission tower in Sweden that is officialy recognised as a historical landmark
Due to the age of the trail were some parts of it completly obliviated which forced us to make detours from our intended path of travel. One of the locals who helped us find the trail again also introduced us to this old power transmission tower.
The steep river banks
Sundsvall is located in the area of Sweden where the downward pushing of the last ice age is most noticeable. After the last ice age was the sea level up to 300 higher than we see today. As the land rose from the sea floor was Ljungan forced to cut through it's own old delta to reach the baltic sea. This has created a river valley with steep banks made out of sand. For a hiker is this both a blessing and a curse. The steepness of the banks have caused the river valley to be largely unexploited. It does however also cause an extreme erosion causing sand slides and parts of the trail to fall into the river.
The trail switches between closely following the river and following the edge of the valley sides. Making the trail highly challenging in some places.
Along the top of the valley
Then down
And up again
Smaller streams joining Ljungan on it's way to the sea
Several smaller streams go into into Ljungan, the softness of the ground in the old delta means that even the smallest stream have been able to cut out dramatic canyons in the valley sides.
Civilization is never far away along Ljungan
Where the valley sides permit are houses and summer cottages located. Old swedish regulations regarding houses close to water allows thetrail to pass right next to a summer cottage or between the houses and the water along the outskirts of someones front lawn. Thus allowing the hiker to follow the river along the whole train rather than making detours around them (as long as you follow the trail).
Southern Sundsvalls freshwater resource. The water in Ljungan holds drinking water quality and is used by people along it as a major freshwater supply.
Pictures of the river bed
Swedish rivers are characterized by large variationsin water levels. Both seasonal and weather dependant, a late thaw in the mountains combined with a wet summer can cause extremly high water levels while summers like this one causes large parts of the river bed to become exposed.
My favourite flower found on what usually is the bottom of the river.
This also makes parts of the hikeing alot easier by allowing the tired hiker to use the river bad as his trail.
Camping arrangements.
This one time at band camp... My friend bought a tent for 15 euro.
It did manage to keep the rain out, sadly this doesn't help when you make the rookie mistake of placing the backpack in the outer tent. I guess this shows the beauty of 24 hour hikes, I didn't need to wear any of the clothes inside the backpack since I was going home soon.
And our nutritious dinner after 8 hours of hikeing along the river. The lit candle and wine was not there in real life... In case you wonder.
Natures own dishing machine. The stream cleaned our plates while we could watch small salmons catching flies in a pond a few meters away.
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