Book Information

Book ID Asin: 1943126070
Book Title: Plan & Go | Kungsleden: All you need to know to complete Sweden’s Royal Trail (Plan & Go Hiking)
Book Author: Danielle Fenton,Wayne Fenton
Book Format and Price:
Book Format Name: Kindle
Book Format Price: $0.00
Book Format Name: Paperback
Book Format Price: $15.95
Book Price: $15.95
Book Category: Books, Sports & Outdoors, Individual Sports and unknown
Book Rating: 37 ratings

Book Product Detail

• Best Sellers Rank: #629,003 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #484 in Camping (Books)
  • #1,008 in Running & Jogging (Books)
  • #1,878 in Hiking & Camping Excursion Guides (Books)

• Customer Reviews:
  4.1 out of 5 stars 37 ratings

unknown

Book Review

Name: Arthur Enyedy
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Kungsleden Information
Date: Reviewed in the United States on September 4, 2017
Review: The worst thing about this book is that the photos are black & white and small. If you go the authors website (search for "treksnappy Kungsleden") you will see beautiful color photos that are much more inspiring. There is also a useful Kungsleden PDF that you can download for $15 from Cody Duncan (search for "distantnorth Kungsleden") - it has more wonderful color photos, and more information about the huts. I am including some information here that I did not see in either this book or in Duncan's PDF.

This book came out after I had already started planning for our hike (We hiked from Abisko to Nikkaluokta in August of 2017), so it was useful with our trip plans. However, because the authors were camping rather than sleeping in the huts, they left out some information about the huts that I would have liked to have known before we took our Kungsleden trek. The most crucial bit of information is the fact that if you prepay STF and get a reservation, it does not guarantee you a bed! Beds are given away on first-come basis, if you arrive late to a hut, you may find yourself without a bed to sleep on, even if you have prepaid for a reservation! When too many people arrive at a hut, spare mattresses will be put out on the floor. Overflow people sleep on these mattresses in the kitchens, and if the kitchens are full, then additional hikers sleep in the "drying room", and if even the drying room is full, people have been known to sleep in the woodshed! The hut warden may come by asking for people to sleep two-in-a-bunk in order to free up more beds. The huts run out of spare mattresses, so you may find yourself on the hard wooden floor. It is a good idea to carry a "sleep sack" with you, the blankets and pillows that come with the hut have no facility for being washed after each use. Do a search on "book stfturist.se" to prepay for a hut. We got the STF membership cards because it gives you a discount each night, it takes two weeks for the card to arrive in the US from Sweden

Obviously, getting to a hut early is a good idea if you wish to procur a bed, especially if you are hiking in the prime season. However, occasionally a large group will travel down the Kungsleden - if you are unfortunate enough to share a hut with one of these large parties, you are pretty much screwed. Be aware that every August there is an event called the Fjallraven Classic, in which 2000 hikers travel from Nikkaluokta to Abisko. Do NOT plan your hike to coincide with this huge event.

Abisko Mountain Station: 365 beds.
Abiskojaure Mountain Cabin: 40 beds
Alesjaure Mountain Cabin: 80 beds
Tjatka Mountain Cabin: 20 beds
Salka Mountain Cabin: 50 beds
Singi Mountain Cabin: We skipped Singi
Kebnekaise Mountain Station: 220 beds

We skipped Singi hut because it has no shop to sell you food, and it has no sauna. Singi is at the lowest elevation on the Abisko to Nikkaloutka route, and therefore it is the warmest. Warm isn't necessarily good - we talked to hikers who did spend a night at Singi and they said it was miserable because the mosquitos were so ferocious that you couldn't step outside.

There is a marked route that allows you to skip Singi while traveling from Salka to Kebnekaise. This bypass reduces the Salka <-> Kebnekaise distance from 16 miles to 14.5 miles, saving almost an hour of time. The bypass require you to climb about 600 feet, but it is not an arduous climb. Besides, if you stick to the main Kungsleden route and go to Singi before traveling to Kebnekaise, you will find yourself climbing (not steeply) as you head east from Singi. The Singi bypass is clearly marked on the map and it is clearly signposted. The bypass is easy to follow, with cairns. Many people go this way to Kebnekaise.

The rooms in the huts are of various sizes. Sometimes we slept in a 4 person room. Sometimes we slept in a room with 20 people (Abiskojaure).

The huts all have a Torkrum - a drying room. It is warm place with hooks and clothes-lines where you can hang all your wet gear. It is a good idea to recover your gear as soon as it has dried, because there is a lot demand for space to hang wet stuff.

There are saunas at Abiskojaure, Alesjaure, Salka, and Kebnekaise. There is no sauna at Tjatka and Singi. The saunas are nude saunas, but sometimes people wear bathing suits.
From 5:00 to 6:30 PM, the saunas are reserved for the women. From 6:30 to 8:00 PM the saunas are exclusively used by the men. From 8:00 to 9:30 PM, the saunas are open to anyone of any gender.

The saunas have 3 rooms. The front room is the changing room. This is where everyone takes off their clothes and hangs them on hooks. The second room is a washing room. In the washing room there is a big barrel of hot (boiling!) water and another of cold water. Pour a mix of hot and cold water into your metal basin using the plastic ladle (caution - if you dump boiling water into the metal basin while you are holding it, you might burn yourself. It is hot!!) You can then soap up and pour the water over yourself to rinse off. There is a drain in the floor. There is room for 4 people to wash at the same time. I found that this setup was an effective way to get clean, this was much better than what I was expecting to find along the trail. The third room is the sauna itself. Everyone sits on a row of bleacher benches. The sauna was always very crowded when I tried to go in, so I ended up just washing up and skipping the hot room. It is traditional to run outside (stark naked) and plunge into the nearby cold mountain stream, and then rush back inside the sauna to heat up again. Lots of people try this, and say it feels great!

The hut kitchens come with pots and pans, utensils, plates, glasses, mugs, etc. There are 4 or 6 gas burners in each hut (we ate early so that we didn't have to compete with other hikers for access to the burners). You are expected to wash your own dishes, fetch fresh water from the rivers, and dump waste water into special spots.

To my surprise, some of the huts had generators, which were used to run the stores. There were refrigerators selling cold beer and cokes. I saw some people using their credit card to pay for shop items - but don't count on the generators running! We brought lots of cash with us.

If you arrive early at some of the huts, there are side jaunts that you can do. At Tjatka, there is a big mountain just west of the hut. It looked pretty steep, but the hut warden told me that on the previous day there were "lots" of people who had climbed it. From the top, you can see into Norway. We only climbed up partway because it had snow on the mountainside, and it was too dangerous to go higher. But even climbing just partway up the mountain gave fantastic views up and down the valley.

At Salka, you can follow a cairn-marked trail 10 km to the Nallo hut, into a valley of peaks and lakes. We only had time travel about 5 KM - far enough to see the lake, but not close enough to reach the Nallo hut. The valley is called Stuor Reaiddavaggi, the trail is marked on the map.

At Kebnekaise, you can hike the 9 KM western route to the summit of Kebnekaise, the highest peak in Sweden. Because the western route does not go over snow, you do not need a guide to hike this path. I believe there is at least 5000' of elevation gain. We had two nights in Kebnekaise, because originally we intended to try climbing the mountain, but instead we opted to take a 18 km (round trip distance) to the Darfaljavri Lake. This hike has some elevation gain, but it takes you to an excellent spot where you can see a big glacier melting into the lake. It wasn't a difficult hike, our total time was 5.5 hours for the entire excursion.

When planning your trip, book the reservation at Kebnekaise first. It is difficult to get a reserved room here because it is a popular destination for Swedes who like to come in for a couple of nights and hike to the top of Kebnekaise. Because Kebnekaise and Abisko do have internet connectivity, these Mountain Stations will hold reservations for you (unlike the Mountain huts). The rooms at Kebnekaise have bathrooms and showers at the end of the hall. The showers are popular - they ran out of hot water, so we waited until after dinner for the hot water tanks to refill before showering.
Kebnekaise only has wifi in the main building.

The dinner at Kebnekaise is quite expensive. If you want, you can utilize a kitchen and cook your own meals. We opted for the dinner, which turned out to be tasty. There is a vegetarian option if you ask for it. The dinner is a bit mysterious. At the beginning of the meal, the staff give a LONG speech in Swedish, presumably about the meal. There is no English translation, so I have no idea what takes so long to explain. The first course is an appetizer bar - full of meats and breads and soup and fish and potatoes. At first, I thought that was the main meal. Both nights of our visit, our table was always the last one permitted to visit the appetizer bar, so some of the best stuff was gone.

You have to remove your boots when entering any hut. I saw a guy at Kebnekaise looking for his boots - and when I left 15 minutes later, he was still looking for them. Someone had made off with the wrong pair of boots! That would be a disaster. I am not sure how to protect yourself from boot theft.

When we landed in Kiruna, we already had reserved a taxi to shuttle us directly to Abisko. We paid SK1825 to shuttle 4 persons directly from Kiruna airport to Abisko Mountain Station. To make taxi reservations in Kiruna, do a search on "flygtaxi kiruna" or "bokning taxi kiruna".
There is a bus from the Kiruna airport to the Kiruna bus station that runs about every half hour for 110 SK each. From the bus station, you catch the #91 bus to Abisko. To get from Nikkaluokta to the Kiruna bus station, you will ride the #92 bus. The #92 bus cost us SK139 per person. You don't buy a ticket, but instead give your credit card to the bus driver. You cannot pay with cash.

Food in the huts is obviously expensive. The selection of items for sale is mostly the same between all the huts. The prices were the same in all of the huts. I wrote down some of the items avail at Salka, prices were recorded in August 2017:
Granola bar: SK30
Potato chips: SK30
Can of Guld Beer: SK40
Can of Coke: SK25
Can of Fanta Orange: SK25
Bag of chocolate covered nuts: SK35
Marabua Chocolate bar: SK35
Bag of peanuts: SK25
HelaggsPulver: SK90 (I think this is powdered eggs)
Helmjolkspulver: SK120 (Powdered Milk)
package of slice salami: SK30
Wasa bread: SK15
Saltine Crackers: SK30
Package of Cookies: SK30
0.5kg of pasta: SK40
Package of olives: SK25
Can of Fruit Cocktail: SK55
Tin of sardines: SK20
Can of chili con carne: SK60
Can of Kottbullar (Meatballs): SK65
Can of Goulash: SK65
Can of lobster: SK30
Package Pasta sauce: SK30
Jar of Pizza sauce: SK35
Box of Svarta Vinbar (black wine): SK20
Box instant cheese & broccoli soup: SK30
Box of raisins: SK20

I hope this helps you plan your journey

Name: Tumblina
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: More trail overview than trail guide
Date: Reviewed in the United States on July 23, 2018
Review: From my perspective, this book seeks to cover too many bases: guide to the trail, guide to how to backpack and travel narrative. I would have preferred a guide with a clearer focus.

This book gives a nice overview of backpacking in general and the author's experience on their hike of the Kungsleden, but it did not meet my personal needs. Prior to purchasing this book I had read the author's blog, which I enjoyed. I did not find this book to be more helpful than the blog. When doing a long-distance backpacking trip I want a guidebook that acts as a reference throughout my trip; information about the trail and side trails is most helpful. Pages on packing lists, how to use hiking poles, meal plans etc. are simply weight I don't need to carry, so I left this book home for my trip. I did, however, print out and reference the review by Arthur Enyedy many times along the trail.

Most hikers hike the Kungsleden from north to south, but the author covers the trail from south to north, so the trail descriptions do not match the experience of most of the book's target audience. I only had time to hike the northernmost section of the trail (Abisko to Singi, then over to Kebnekaise and Nikkoluokta) and chose to stay in huts rather than tent. For 90% of the people I met on the trail (many of whom were tenting), each day's hike was determined by the distance between huts. Guidebooks that hikers from other countries were using broke trail descriptions down by sections between huts. This book is organized around where the author camped along the way rather than the huts (large, identifiable features along the trail).

In addition, the author hiked the trail once, so some information is only relevant to the conditions in which the author hiked. She describes a white, fluffy plant which indicates the presence of bogs. I encountered plenty of bogs, but no plant which met the author's description.

If you are new to backpacking or just looking to get a sense of what this trail is like, this book may well serve your purposes. (Though the photos on the author's on-line blog are far better, and the blog is free.) If you're looking for a lean trail guide for your hike, this book may well disappoint. If you've already read the blog, and it is a good one, and you've been backpacking before, this book won't give you much new information.

All in all, I'm ok with the purchase of the book because I had enjoyed the blog and now the author gets paid a bit more for that. Would I turn to another guidebook by this author or printing press after having read this book? No.

Name: Yorgaki
Rating: 2.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Kindle version a disappointment
Date: Reviewed in the United States on July 19, 2022
Review: Kindle version does not include basic navigation functions like a table of contents, making it particularly hard to locate information of interest or use. The book is also oriented for those hiking the Kungsleden from South to North. This plus the lack of advance search or navigation functions made it fairly useless for me as a planning tool.

Name: Fehinoj
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A super useful guide to preparing for and hiking the Gungsleden Trail
Date: Reviewed in the United States on June 15, 2018
Review: Great written information interspersed with useful tables. Logically formatted and covers everything from getting to the Gungsleden to the full 270 mile trail itself from beginning to end. The latter part of the book is a personal daily accounting of her travels (which I found very interesting). The only slight drawback was that it is written in the South-to-North direction whereas I (and most hikers) travel this trail North-to-South but it’s only a minor inconvenience (I actually read the 4 major sections of the trail in reverse order to account for this). I highly recommend this book to anyone planning or pondering walking Sweden’s Gungsleden Trail hike. I hope this author plans to write more hiking books in the future as she has already been on many long trails around the world and brings a wealth of Trail Knowledge to her writing.

Home | Contact  | DMCA