It wouldn’t be demeaning to the ski hill of Tärnaby in northern Sweden to say that even the keenest of skiers may not have heard of it. After all, it has just five lifts (four of them drags), 20 pistes and a mere 365m of vertical ascent, topping out at a very modest 789m, whilst the local population amounts to around 500 citizens.
Yet the local ski club, Tärna IK Fjällvinden is arguably the most successful alpine skiing club in the history of the sport. Maybe there’s something in the snow or water hereabouts, but Tärna IK Fjällvinden has had amongst its members some of the greatest alpine skiers of all time, including Ingemar Stenmark, Anja Pärson (pictured below), Stig Strand, Jens Byggmark, and Bengt Fjällberg. All of these illustrious names in skiing honed their skills on its slopes.
The club has amassed three Olympic gold medals, ten World Championship golds, 129 Alpine Skiing World Cup victories and no end of silver and bronze medals in the above competitions and across 22 World Cup disciplines.
I’d come to Tärnaby intrigued as to how a little place like this could have such a giant reputation – which obviously meant skiing its slopes. However, despite a fun morning on pistes named after the local heroes – Ingemarbacken, Anjabacken, etc – I can’t say I came away any the wiser. I guess the success of Tärna IK Fjällvinden may be down to the fact that in sport it seems that success breeds success, and with the likes of Ingemar Stenmark to look up to (the most successful male alpine skier of all time), the Tärnaby skiers who followed in his ski tracks had been set a very high bar.
However, as I swooped down Anjabacken – a rolling mix of a blue, red and black piste that was to become my favourite run – it was refreshing to reflect on the fact that little Tärnaby is proof that you don’t always have to be big and brash to be best.
In all honesty there’s not enough skiing here to keep you occupied for more than a day or so, but there’s also some very acceptable freeride and ski touring terrain to be enjoyed in and around Tärnaby, located as it is on the edge of one of Europe’s biggest wilderness areas, the 5628-square-kilometre Vindelfjällen Nature Reserve.
And about 20km up the road (or two Swedish miles; yes, there’s such a thing as a ‘Swedish mile’, or ‘mil’, which is the equivalent of 10km, apparently) is the far bigger ski hill of Hemavan, which is where I spent the remainer of my visit to Swedish Lapland.
Hemavan is, in fact, northern Sweden’s biggest ski resort, with ten lifts, 665m of vertical from a high point of 1135m, plenty of easily accessible freeride terrain and more ski touring options than you can shake a ski pole at.
Whilst we’re on facts and figures, here are a few more that should make Brit skiers who are looking for somewhere a bit different sit up and take notice. As of 2027 there’ll be an international airport only one hour away from Hemavan at Mo-i-Rana in neighbouring Norway, which means that if direct flights from the UK are scheduled (a decision had not been made at the time of writing) you’ll be able to get to this snow-sure corner of Lapland as easily as the Alps. At present you have to fly here from Stockholm, although Hemavan’s tiny airport is only a couple of minutes away from the slopes.
There are also plans to expand the ski area, with four new ski lifts set to be installed, all of which would mean that skiing in northern Sweden could become a much more viable option for British skiers.
What you’ll find here is very different from the Alps. From Hemavan’s high point at the top of the Kungsliften drag lift (there are a lot of drag lifts in this part of the world – snowboarders beware!) huge, rolling whaleback mountains interspersed with dark crags and steep valleys draw your gaze northwards, into a landscape that’s bereft of any sign of humanity. It’s a veritable ski touring paradise.
Meanwhile, directly below, a selection of blue and red pistes snake away towards Hemavan’s base station, with endless opportunities for off-piste shenanigans in the terrain to either side. “Excellent stuff”, I thought as I surveyed what was on offer. Even better I was being shown around – on my first day at least – by local ski instructor and former ski racer Jenny Sjöbom.
Jenny didn’t muck about, suggesting we head straight to the top of the resort to sample the longest run, a 5km descent simply marked on the piste map as ‘10’. It proved to be a long, winding blue starting off on exposed, somewhat windy and mighty cold open slopes which provided excellent views of the region’s highest peak, the 1768-metre Norra Syrtertoppen, situated to our northwest on the Norwegian border.
The lack of other skiers meant that we could barrel along at full speed, having a real blast on undulating, winding terrain that eventually dropped into low birch forest before depositing us at the base of the Hemavan Gondola. It was the ideal introduction to the resort, providing a good taster of everything that Hemavan has to offer.
I was able to enjoy two days exploring Hemavan’s terrain, by which time I’d got to know it pretty well. There’s only a modest 30km or so of groomed pistes, and with absolutely no lift queues to worry about (and bear in mind that I was there in mid-February, when most resorts in the Alps are crammed to bursting point with skiers) you can get from one end of the resort to the other pretty sharpish. However, this didn’t mean there wasn’t plenty more to keep me occupied.
For one thing, I’d noticed when getting off the Kungsliften drag that rather than hitting the pistes below, many locals were attaching skins to their skis and schlepping off into the wilds to the northeast of the ski area.
Being of a somewhat indolent nature this struck me as the best sort of ski touring – use a ski lift to do the bulk of the ascending, thus keeping your legs in tip-top condition for the descent. No point overdoing the hard work, after all…
It turned out that this is classic ski touring country, where the terrain varies from gentle slopes that are easy to both ascend and descend to pretty much as steep and challenging as you like. Furthermore, there are any number of loops you can enjoy which take you out into this impressive sub-Arctic wilderness, before circling back to Hemavan and all the luxuries of 21st century Scandinavian living.
In order to check some of this out for myself (the ski touring, not all the luxuries of 21st century Scandinavian living), I met up with Finnish expat and ski guide Rasmus Lindholm to spend a day exploring the backcountry to the immediate east of the resort.
Having spent the previous day tear-arsing around the slopes under bright blue skies, it was frustrating to be greeted with flat light and low cloud the following day, which, given the largely treeless/featureless landscape of the higher slopes somewhat limited what we were able to do.
That said, neither Swedes nor Finns are the kind of people to be put off by a little thing like bad weather, so Rasmus suggested that we skin up from the bottom of the Fjällsforsbacken piste through quiet birch forest and on to the open fells beneath 1413-metre Murterstoppen, a round-shouldered peak on the edge of the Vindalfjallen Nature Reserve.
My aforementioned preferred means of ascent – using a ski lift – was thus scuppered from the get-go, but notwithstanding the lack of mechanical assistance the ascent was my idea of perfect, i.e. not very steep. This meant that rather than puffing and panting like a steam train I was able to chat with Rasmus as we climbed. I discovered that not only does the terrain around Hemavan offer ski touring for every level of ability, but “…there’s also some really excellent ski touring up towards the Norwegian border, about 30 minutes-drive away”.
“Does it get busy?”
“No, not really; not as busy as Hemavan, anyway”.
Which considering we didn’t encounter another person during our six-hour trip out into the mountains and back is quite something, especially if, like me, you enjoy having the slopes to yourself.
Even better, in the afternoon we were blessed with winter sunlight casting golden shades across the hardpacked snow as we skied back down to Hemavan on said deserted slopes – short of enjoying our descent in perfect powder, this was as good as it gets, really.
It struck me that this corner of Sweden is ideal for anyone looking to escape the masses, and I was reminded of this once again when I left on my flight back to Stockholm the following day.
The evening before, the manager of the slopeside Hemavan Högfjällshotell, where I’d been staying, had phoned me to enquire whether I had my driving licence with me.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Great, do you want to drive yourself to the airport in the hotel van tomorrow morning? Just leave it in the car park and we’ll pick it up later”.
“OK, no problem”.
There was reason behind this largesse. I had to be at the check-in desk at 5am, and – understandably – few local taxi drivers, or any members of the hotel staff were particularly keen to pick me up for the short five-minute drive to the airport (even more so given that it was snowing and minus 17°C when I left the hotel).
After I’d parked the van, I rushed in out of the cold to check-in at the remarkably quiet departure area, where I was told: “You’re the only passenger this morning”. So, whereas on my usual February ski trip to the French or Swiss Alps I’d expect the flight to be a chaotic scene of crowded check-in desks, frantic shoppers barging their way around duty-free and irritable queues in the departure lounge, here in northern Sweden I had my own private plane.
Quiet pistes, empty backcountry and even a ‘private’ plane – this had turned into the kind of ski trip I could get used to.
