Introduction
Bergslagsleden is
the longest stand alone trail that is a part of the Swedish E1 trail
system, and spans 280km. It is a wonderful trail, one of my all time favorites in fact, so after finishing it I decided to write up a more detailed trail guide specifically for this trail. It would be a great trail to do a short thru-hike of all on its own, and I plan to do this in the future.
However if you would like to read more about the E1 trails and how Bergslagsleden fits into the E1, you can do so here,
and there is also a list of links to my other completed reports of the
Swedish E1 trails. Please keep in mind this is still a work in
progress.
Bergslagsleden has its endpoint in the south at the campground Stenkällegården,
and the endpoint in the north is the village of Kloten. For more
general information about the trail in English, Swedish, and German, here is a link to the official trail guide. The trail is divided
into 17 stages, and the official site has PDF informational maps available to download free of charge.
Below I will provide links to each of my 6 trip reports for the section hikes I did to complete this trail, which can also be found in my E1 trail guide. Full disclosure: roughly two thirds of stage 15 was skipped due to illness, all of stage 6 was skipped due to excessive snow, roughly two thirds of stage 1 was skipped also due to snow, and a few stages got a few kms trimmed off due to public transportation. After these links is a brief epilogue on my final thoughts on the trail, how I would plan a thru-hike of the trail in the future, and other tips and observations from the trail.
The Trail Guides
--Part 1 (79km), Karlsborg - Laxå (hiked in September 2014)
--Part 2 (58km), Laxå - Leken (hiked in October 2014)
--Part 3 (49km), Leken - Mogetorp (hiked in November 2014)
--Part 4 (47km), Mogetorp - Uskavi (hiked in January 2015)
--Part 5 (46km + 6km), Uskavi/Lindesberg - Stjärnfors/Kopparberg (hiked in February 2015)
--Part 6 (38km), Kopparberg - Kloten (hiked in April 2015)
Epilogue
As I've already made clear in the reports themselves, I really enjoyed this trail as a whole. However I feel like I could improve on my experience of this trail significantly next time I hike it. The first thing that I would do differently is to hike it in the summer or perhaps late spring. There are areas on the trail that get a lot of snow, which makes things more challenging, as a few of my reports pointed out. Another issue is fog and mist during the autumn months, which while they can be quite beautiful, ruined a lot of good views for me during a few trips.
It's only 280km total, which I think I would have no problems doing a thru-hike of in about two weeks or a bit less. Though I wouldn't want to go on a thru-hike of this trail for less than two weeks so that I would have time for a few zero days and/or exploring of side trials and other cool sights to be found on or slightly off trail. I've already given a fair amount of thought of how a thru-hike of this trail might be planned, so here is how I'd try and do it:
*At the height of summer, around July-August, I'd pack up my summer gear (around 2-3kg base weight) and 5 days of food. Then I'd catch a train to Kopparberg, hike west from town, find the trail, and start hiking southbound.
*I'd resupply another 3 days of food in Nora and continue hiking southbound.
*At the E18 highway at Leken, I'd take a bus west to the town of Karlskoga (resupplying as needed), where I'd then pick up the side trail Tiosjöarsleden. Following this side trail south-west, I'd make my way back to Bergslagsleden and continue southbound.
*After finishing stage 14, I'd hike or hitchhike to Laxå to resupply as needed, and then return to the trail to continue southbound.
*Finally after finishing the trail at the end of stage 17, I would continue hiking southbound on Västra Vätterleden, resupplying as needed on the way in Karlsborg, and ending the trip in Hjo, which is a lovely little town on the shores of the massive lake Vättern.
Yup. Something like that, and if I'm lucky sometime soon.
In general the trail is very well maintained, there are plenty of trail shelters and places to fill up on tap water; yet at many parts of the trail you feel pretty isolated and cut off from civilization, a more raw and wild terrain. I can't comment much on bugs and other pests, as my travels on this trail were not during high bug season--but even during the fall and early spring, there were a fair amount of bugs out.
That's all I can think of adding to this trail guide at the moment, but surely in the future I will give updates and additions. Until then, and as always, feel free to ask questions or give feedback.
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This is Part 6 of my 6 part series of trail guides for Bergslagsleden. Please read my introduction and epilogue to this trail here if you haven't done so yet. This entire trail is also a part of the E1 trail system, and you can read more about that in my E1 trail guides here. Please keep in mind it is still a work in progress. And you can find the official trail website here if you haven't already.
This report covers stages 2-1, or from roughly the town
of Kopparberg to the end/start point of the trail in the village of Kloten. These stages combined are only 38km.
Stage 2 goes right past/through Kopparberg to the west, and the town offers limited but good resources for hikers,
such as restaurants, supermarkets, hotels/BBs, public
transportation, etc. Kloten has a hostel and is on the 233 highway, but that's about it. North of Kloten the closest town is Smedjebacken, which is roughly 35km away. However there are some issues with the E1 trail that I will address in a trail guide to come, but in short it is not exactly easy, straightforward, or perhaps entirely pleasant getting to Smedjebacken.
Hiking southbound on the E1 you continue on Bergslagsleden, and you can check out my previous guide from stages 4-3 here. Hiking northbound you continue onto two different trails going north towards Smedjebacken, and you can read my report on the first trail from Kloten to Björsjö here.
Now on with the show!
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I arrived by train once again to the town of Kopparberg in early April. The weather was nice--sunny and about 7C during the day--and I was looking forward to finishing up Bergslagsleden on this trip. I gave snow little thought, because I thought that most of it would be gone. Not all of it, of course, and I saw plenty of patches of snow in the woods on the train ride up. But surely there wouldn't be any knee-high snow on the trail or waist-high snow drifts. As you can probably guess, I was of course very wrong. So snow would once again pose a big hindrance to my travels, but in the end I didn't allow it to slow me down. More on this later.
To find the trail from Kopparberg there are many options, as it's fairly close to town. You could even hike south down the highway that goes through town and go to the very beginning of stage 2 (if you're going northbound), or just pick a dirt road just outside of the tiny town center and walk west, which is what I did. Shortly after arriving, I was back on the trail again, and very much enjoyed the path that goes past the big lake Ljusnaren. The trail passes a beach and swimming area, a few dirt roads, but is mostly nice, woodsy trail until it reaches the shelter on the shores of lake Olovsjön.
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This is Part 5 of my 6 part series of trail guides for Bergslagsleden. Please read my introduction and epilogue to this trail here if you haven't done so yet. This entire trail is also a part of the E1 trail system, and you can read more about that in my E1 trail guides here. Please keep in mind it is still a work in progress. And you can find the official trail website here if you haven't already.
This report covers stages 4-3, or from roughly the town of Lindesberg to the town of Kopparberg. These stages are somewhat longer at 23km each.
The southern end of stage 4 is somewhat close (~12km) to the town of Lindesberg, and is also close
(~2km) to the 50 highway to the east, which has daily bus connections
(e.g. Fanthyttan bus stop nearby). The end/start point of the Stjärnfors area at the northern part of stage 3 is about 6km from Kopparberg, but in stage 2 the trail goes right past/through this small town as well. Both Lindesberg and Kopparberg offer limited but good resources for hikers,
such as restaurants, supermarkets, hotels/BBs, public
transportation, etc. But do note that Kopparberg is smaller than Lindesberg, and will have less options and such.
Hiking southbound on the E1 you continue on Bergslagsleden, and you can check out my previous guide from stages 7-5 here. Hiking northbound you continue on Bergslagsleden, and you can check out my guide on the last two stages here.
Now on with the show!
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This was one of my more memorable and challenging hikes, but that has a lot to do with the seasonal conditions. This section hike was in end of February of 2015, and presented some unique challenges that I think I ought to describe first before getting to the rest of the report. In doing preparations for this trip, I did as much research as I could think of beforehand. I checked the weather reports several times a day a week before the trip, I called and spoke to some locals (such as the director of a cross-country ski club in the area), and even looked at some webcams in or around the area. I did all this because of the snow. As I have spoken about in some of my Youtube videos, this year has been a rather warm winter here in Sweden. 2014 was the warmest year on record for Sweden, actually.
I don't own snow shoes or skis, and didn't want to buy them just for this trip (though in the future I am strongly considering it, but don't want to rush things). And in many parts of southern Sweden, the snow had long since melted away by the middle of February. Plus all my research suggested that there wouldn't be that much snow around a significant part of the trail... however I knew going into this trip that some parts of the trail, due to elevation in particular, was going to have snow. In some cases, lots of snow.
I've been meaning to make a flow chart like this for a while now, but never got around to it until today. With all the different shelters that I have owned and written about on here, I get a fair amount of questions related to shelters. Why I have several, which one is best for what, how do you pick a shelter, etc. So now I have this handy little flow chart to show people. Feel free to use/share it if you think it is helpful, and as always feedback is always encouraged.
So that's about it, I'll keep it short and sweet and let the chart speak for itself:
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This is Part 4 of my 6 part series of trail guides for Bergslagsleden. Please read my introduction and epilogue to this trail here if you haven't done so yet. This entire trail is also a part of the E1 trail system, and you can read more about that in my E1 trail guides here. Please keep in mind it is still a work in progress. And you can find the official trail website here if you haven't already.
This report covers stages 7-5, or from Mogetorp to Uskavi/Lindesberg. This will be a unique report in that there I hiked quite a lot of off-trail and/or alternative routes in these stages, perhaps the most dramatic example was skipping stage 6 entirely--more on this later.
The Mogetorp area is on the 50/68 highway and has
daily bus connections to the city of Örebro in the south and the town of Nora in the
north. There is also a restaurant and hotel near the bus stop. The Uskavi area is somewhat close (~12km) to the town of Lindesberg, and is also close (~2km) to the 50 highway to the east, which has daily bus connections (e.g. Fanthyttan bus stop nearby) going north to the town of Kopparberg or south to Lindesberg if you don't want to hike all the way there. The trail also passes close to the quaint town of Nora, which is on the western shores of the big and aptly named lake Norasjön. Both Nora and Lindesberg offer basic but good resources for hikers, such as cafés, pubs, restaurants, supermarkets, hotels/BBs, public transportation, etc.
Hiking southbound on the E1 you continue on Bergslagsleden, and you can check out my previous guide from stages 11-8 here. Hiking northbound you continue on Bergslagsleden, and you can check out my report on stages 4-3 here.
Now on with the show!
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After weeks of planning and keeping a close eye on the weather, things did not go as planned for this section hike--but my friend Tomas and I still had a great and very memorable trip. Rather than one day of light snow and two days of clear skies and sun, with low temps going down to around -6C to -8C, instead we got lots and lots of snow, hardly any sun, and low temps only around -3C. When I mean lots of snow, I mean roughly 50cm of snow total--and that's on top of snow and ice that was already there beforehand. It made for an interesting if not difficult set of conditions for hiking through the woods.
