Åre,
Sweden
Thursday, February 7, 2008
After having been away from the mountains of BC for too long I needed to find some mountains to go play in. I had decided I would head to Åre, Sweden's largest ski are. What I didn't realize was that it was quite far north and took a days travel to get there. I hopped on a bus to Ostersund since my guide book said I could take a local bus from there to Åre. However when I got to Ostersund at 7:00pm, this being Sweden everything was shut down and there were no more buses running to Åre and I still had about 150kms to go. So I hitch hiked. Sweden is not the best place to hitch hike in though because there are not many safe places along the highway to stand. In winter your choices are the road or the snow bank! Fortunately a nice paraglider picked me up and drove me into Åre, finally arriving around 10:30pm. Most cheap places were booked the first night due to an university holiday which I was unaware of so I had to fork out a bit of cash the first night to stay in Hotel Tott. The price was fortunately not that bad for the nice room and free breakfast that I got. I was scheduled to leave the next morning from Ostersund but having decided that Åre was a hassel to get to I figured it would be a shame to only ski there one day. So I found a new hostel that had just opened up and found the next cheap train ticket that would take me directly back to Ås and cancelled my bus tickets. If you are going to travel to Åre the best way is either by train of plane! The next cheap train ticket wasn't for another 5 days, so I had some time in Åre.
Being the cheap person that I am I only bought a ski ticket once out of the 6 days I was there. This was only because I figured the weather wasn't good enough for me to go off touring by myself. Other days I would put my skins on my skis and go exploring the off pist areas and backcountry skiing areas. I realized that this was actually the best thing for me to do anyways because the skiing at Åre isn't really any good anyways. It is mostly beginner and intermediate runs, nothing very interesting except for off pist. Åre has a reputation for being Sweden's best skiing but I would say it is really more of a playground for the rich to go and get drunk in. People seem to go to Åre to party and the area is less about the skiing. While I had a good time touring, I would not recommend going there for the skiing. The ski resort also has very bad customer service. At least I got my fix of the mountains and could return home to study some more.
