Planning a 1300km hike - Gröna Bandet

It's actually the first time for us on that distance. But here how we proceed. Let's see how it goes!

The first thing we've done is to look at what is has been done before to get inspiration. Some does 40km per day when some does 15km. To choose the distance, furthermore than your overall fitness, is like a space rocket. More days you hike, more you need food, heavier is your backpack. But if your backpack is lighter, you can cover a longer distance and then need less food for the section.

We say that we need around 600 to 800g of food per day (dried and light food) to cover the Kcal needed per day. For a 100km section:

• 15km covered per day = ~6 days = ~4kg of food

• 25km covered per day = 4 days = 2,5kg of food

And almost 2kg difference is huge!

The other factor that is specific to this hike is the refuelling. We have to send parcels in specific spots.

At the end, we divided in 8 sections from 100 to 200km

We mainly used the app called Caltopo because it has the Swedish and Norwegian topo map offline on the mobile app (with a subscription)

Based on the Gröna Bandet Website, extra info and map checking we add the information useful (shopping, bridge, boat, etc).

The Gröna Bandet has some rules, and concerning the trail itself we are free to choose within the following rules:

At both start and finish, place your hand on the mountain station’s “Blue Door” in Grövelsjön or the boundary marker at Treriksröset.

• Participants choose their own route through the mountains, but must pass west of or through the following locations:

  • The eastern tip of Torneträsk

  • Nikkaluokta

  • Saltoluokta

  • Jäckvik

  • Håkafot

Finally, during a few evening, we pointed approximately each camp place to estimate the duration of each section.

We will use several tools to find our way. Even though, some sections are very well-marked (like the Kungsleden). But when the weather, our tiredness as well as the swamp area of forest, the job gets harder. And we most likely have to go off tracks at some point.

The paper map

We will have 1/100 000 scale map to plan the overall days. We send them in the parcels.

The phone

With the app Caltopo and the app Suunto we can check very precisely and up-to-date map with the GPX file track on it.

The sport watch

For the on the go following the route, and during the worst of the weather, it gives offline tracking and routing with the help of an improved open-street map. We will use the Suunto Race.

Thanks for reading!
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