Kayaking in Möjareservatet

After moving out of Sweden in 2015, I've missed the Stockholm archipelago a lot. There’s nothing quite like it in Europe outside of Scandinavia and British Isles.

Me and Chillu went to my favorite part around the island of Möja. In the beginning of June there were very few people out there, so it was very quiet. As usual, Stockholm archipelago offered the best accommodation for the lowest price of 0 SEK.

The best accommodation is often free

Sunset seen from my sleeping bag

After sunset, as seen from Chillu's sleeping bag

This was our route on the first day (the time and elevation shown by Strava are wrong though).


Slalom around the small islands avoids the open sea, which makes it less windy and more pleasant. Also, the small islands and channels between them are more beautiful than the open sea.

Calm waters in Bockösundet, a channel between two islands

Enough with the words, for more photos you can go to Flickr or Google Photos (a bigger album from two cameras).

Loptoši™ 2017: Slovakia off the beaten path

The theme of Loptoši™ 2017 was discovering Slovakia off the beaten path, with a focus on the east and mid-south.

The trip started with a streak of bad luck. A few hours before the trip we’ve discovered that our car rental has been canceled. And half of our crew (Palo and Roman) suffered from stomach flu in the first days of the trip.

In the end it was a great trip, full of interesting places and experiences. Instead of covering it chronologically, let me describe the 3 most memorable places.

Stužica, primeval forest

Stužica is a primeval forest that hasn’t been touched for 100 years by humans. I’ve been to forests that looked like they have been vacuumed, but I prefer messy unmanaged forest with trees left to decompose. We’ve experienced Stužica during wet and foggy weather, which created just the right atmosphere. Stužica thus became the top experience of the trip for me.

Trees left to decompose

Hiking in the fog

Železník, former mining town

Železník lies deep in the forest high up on a mountain. The mountain used to be one of the largest sources of iron in the area. It was a prosperous lively small village/town, but now there’s very few people left. If you speak Slovak, you can watch a documentary about Železník.

When we arrived there, the Sun was about to set and Ivan was reading out loud an article about Železník from Čierne Diery. His captivating voice, the abandoned structures around us and the great view gave me goose bumps.

Old phone booth and post office

Sunset seen from Železník

Inside blast furnace near Železník

Čierny Váh, the biggest battery in the country

The Čierny Váh pumped-storage plant is a few tonnes of concrete in nature. A top of a hill has been replaced by a water reservoir.

View from the air. Photo by Achernar.sk.

People say that nature should be preserved, but this structure has enormous benefits. During the night, it takes the overflow electric power from power plants that are slow to turn off, like nuclear power plants, and uses it to pump water 400 meters higher. During the day, the water flows back down, generating energy. It’s basically a giant battery and the most powerful power plant in the country.

We could have preserved this particular piece of nature and instead built a plant that’s easier to turn off and start, like a coal plant, but the environmental consequences would have been much higher. Čierny Váh is still the least environmentally harmful solution.

Photos

A selection of my photos is on Flickr and an album merged from multiple people is on Google Photos.

Hölloch – Weekend in a Cave

Hölloch is currently the 10th longest cave in the world (it used to be the first). Spending a weekend there was a great experience that I can only recommend. It was also one of the toughest trips I've ever done.

Saturday

After a short briefing, we left the outer world and entered the underground. My mind wondered about a lot of things:

• How will we cope with the darkness? Answer from the future: just fine.
• How will we cope with narrow spaces? Answer from the future: mostly fine.
• Will we be afraid of getting trapped between rocks? Answer from the future: yes, a few times.
• Will it be physically demanding? Answer from the future: you bet!

The first 2 hours to the bivouac were easy hiking with occasional ladders and ropes. The corridors were wide and spacious.

First part was exactly like mountain hiking.

Under a the biggest waterfall we've seen in the cave.

We dropped our stuff at the bivouac and went to explore the cave. The corridors were getting smaller and smaller. Up to the bivouac, we were mostly standing upright, but now we appreciated every moment when we could stand up. We crouched, we crawled and everything started to hurt. I've also crashed many times into pointy rocks in the walls.

I didn't have to breathe out to pass through but Dano did.

We saw some of the best cave formations of Hölloch, but it was nothing compared to what you can see in the Slovak public caves.

These get destroyed during floods.

At about 8 PM, our guide asked us if we wanted to continue and I was the only one in the group who said no. Dano later told me that I just said what everyone else was thinking. The guide said that usually only one group per year goes further than us, so we still felt good about our stamina.

In total, we climbed about 1000 altitude meters in 10 hours. When Jakub told me about the trip, I imagined a light cave hiking with an occasional ladder or a rope, but this was some tough shit.

We went to bed but I couldn't fall asleep, because it was too hot. The cave has a stable temperature of 6 degrees Celsius, but it felt too hot in my sleeping bag.

Bivouac with sleeping space, kitchen and eating tables.

Sunday

We went for a fairly easy walk in the morning, checking out more cave formations.

I was impressed with all the infrastructure they have inside the cave. For example, there is a drinking water system that uses just gravity. Or you can send an SMS from the cave using very very long antennas transmitting long waves that pass through hundreds of meters of rock.

It was time for the local Rutschbahn (slide in German), where you slide on one shoe through a steep corridor. The record for it is around one minute, but we went much slower than that. We still hurt ourselves, though.

Before we exited the cave, we also made a small detour and took a boat over a small lake inside the cave. During rain, the water in the lake can rise up quickly and you can't come back the same way.

At this point I was really tired and really looking forward to the exit. Vladimír was not and he needed to crawl through every little passage that fits a person.

Typical Vladimír.

The end

At home I discovered that I had a lot of bruises on my body and two bleeding wounds on my back. Every one of my muscles hurt, but it was definitely worth it. Caving is hard but beautiful.

Photos album merged from multiple cameras is on Google Photos.