FarStrider: A Walk In Wintry Swedish Forest - Bohusleden, Stora Mölnesjön

Here I'll share one of the better experiences I had in my life, the walks around Stora Mölnesjön and Vättlefjäll Natural reserve. The name of the track we used to follow is Bohusleden and I highly recommend to the visitors of Gothenburg to spare a day and see these lakes, regardless time of the year. Its equally beautiful in every season and while popular hiking trail, its still relatively less walked.

The Bohusleden trail starts (or at least passes close to) Rannebergen, a part of Angered suburb in Gothenburg, Sweden. Also there is the border of Vättlefjäll Natural reserve and the lake Stora Mölnesjön. This natural reserve is somewhat typical for Sweden place. One can clearly see the rocky ground, covered with relatively thin layer of soil and here and there fallen trees, which have the root system visible and one can see how it is spread very thin and wide over the boulders below. The natural reserve is pretty humid place (as most of Sweden) across the whole year and this means that there are always big swamp and bog areas, which are often difficult or even impossible to cross. Also it is good idea to be somewhat careful with the wild life as there are some dangerous animals as moose, bear and red deer during the winter or adder and mosquito during the summer. I guess making noise while walking is enough of deterrent for most of the bigger animals and spray to repel mosquitoes for the smaller. About snakes, the adder can be dangerous, but it rarely injects venom when biting and even then the venom is unlikely to kill healthy adult human, but still its a good idea to look at our feet when walking in the forests. Actually I plan in some future articles to cover more in detail the information about these animals. Also its worth to note that this place is not so far from the polar circle and in midwinter the day is pretty short, the sun rises above the horizon for something like two or three hours a day and by 3 o'clock its already dark. Having that in mind we can enjoy our walks around the lakes in Vättlefjäll, which during the summer months radiate the spirit of the Scandinavian nature and one nearly expects to run across some mythical forest creature like dwarf or hulder

So it has been snowing for few days and the fog was thick. As I said we went for a walk in the Vättlefjäll Natural reserve. Stora Mölnesjön was frozen, which is its usual state for this time of the year, however the continuous snowfalls we observed the last few years are not so usual. Anyway there were a few people having their walk and enjoying the scenery. Also we passed through few typical houses built in the outskirts of the reserve and the lake and I think that it should be very nice to live in this area. It is just 30 min away from the city centre but I have the feeling that the civilization is already far away. The temperature was well below zero, but there was something rather interesting, young local guys were taking bath in the icy waters of the lake in hole they cut in the ice. So, here we have few of the pictures from that day, enjoy!