Trip Overview:

Our syllabus for this excursion very much creates an adventure with a detailed and grounded experience for camping in the winter north woods .

Upon arrival at the Northern Soul Journeys homestead you’ll be guided to the expedition style camp where the trip will be based. Here our two stove-heated canvas tents form the basis of our accommodation and warm spaces.

During the training sessions, in order to empower you to take journeys of your own in this environment we’ve built a robust series of workshops to train you in managing the core needs of the human animal in the winter woods. 

Sessions over the first three days will cover generating and maintaining Warmth, accessing and producing Water, Food supply during winter and the realities of defrosting supplies ahead of need, cooking on and under the stove etc, Stovesmanship has huge bearing on water, food and warmth modules inside a canvas tent, and ensuring you get adequate Sleep throughout your expedition. These sessions will include a host of sub-skills such as axe and frame saw use, fire lighting, clothing technologies and management and so much more, a fractal list of almost endless learning!

As you gain confidence in these grounding skills, applying lessons in the real world environment and growing in capability, we’ll seek to enter the Journeying Phase of the trip. Being authentically out on the land we’ll be guided by the Nature as to what kind of journey we make.

Whether a half day's travel in difficult conditions or a full day’s hike in sun-soaked crystal snow, the journey will be epic all the way. In this phase we can apply the lessons you’ve learnt so far and add a layer of practical trailcraft to the skills. An example might be accessing lake water without the auger of the basecamp, or making shelter without a canvas tent. 

We’ll also consider means of conveyance during this phase, to use a Mors Kochanski-inspired skill set, we may need to craft snow shoes or pack frames to mobilise ourselves across the landscape. We’ll have the opportunity to try a few different models of modern snowshoes and how they behave in different terrain too.

We’ll be sleeping across two five-person canvas tents heated with a wood burning stove, 4 clients and 1 guide to each tent. Whilst we can’t predict the weather, and therefore the temperature outside the tents, inside we can maintain a minimum overnight temperature of around 0 degrees C. We should plan for colder weather, and indeed we may have conditions that allow you to experiment with cold-camping outside of the tent, we recommend a sleeping bag rated to -20C comfort, or better.

We’ll cook our evening meals on the woodstoves in the tents and dine communally, breakfast and  lunch on a trip like this will be swift but hearty, with the evening meal providing a lesson in itself as well as a focal point for the evening, as the sun goes down around 4.30pm.

At all times we’ll seek to revolve the sessions around the core ethos that you could return to the winter Boreal forest for adventures in the future without your guides, and find yourself capable, well equipped and confident. The mindset and skills we address during this trip will travel with you, into the cold and beautiful theatre of sub-zero journeying.

Trip details:

• Start time: 10am on Monday.

  • We meet you the Northern Soul Journeys homestead in Angestrask, north of Lulea.

• Finish Time: 10am on Saturday.

• Flights and in-country transport are not included with your booking, and we suggest you take out adequate travel insurance to cover your logistics.

  • Being a small independent business we’re unable to provide overseas transportation under current insurance and licensing regulations. In your welcome pack, as well as directly with the Borealis team during the build up to the trip we’ll be available to help resolve all your transport needs and can recommend several options for you in Sweden.

• There is a maximum group size of 8 participants plus the instructor team.

• We will be camping in the woods in two 5 berth heated canvas tents for the duration of the trip. If you’d like to discuss other options such as bringing your own sleeping system just drop us an email.

• We’re all about accessibility when it comes to adventure and hope to inspire a culture of inclusivity in the outdoors. We’re so excited to have Hannah on the core Borealis Team as a highly experienced guide, and as an advocate for women in adventure. If you’d like to speak to Hannah about the trip prior to booking, and for any advice when it comes to camping outdoors you are very welcome and encouraged to contact her at northernsouljourneys@gmail.com

• A full welcome pack will be provided on booking, all specialist equipment will be provided.

  • The kit list for the trip can be found HERE

  • Winter sleeping bags and mothership jackets are available to hire for your trip from the Borealis team

  • A prerequisite of the trip is that participants are confident at camping in the UK at all times of year and have a good general understanding of what is needed to be comfortable outdoors. We want this trip to be accessible to as many people as possible, but a novice to normal wild camping would find the leap to Swedish winter camping very challenging. You might consider attending our Itinerant Bushcraft Course first if you haven’t done any bushcraft before.

• The course is fully catered, starting with lunch on the first day and ending with Breakfast on the last. We'd recommend bringing along some favourite snacks to boost your energy and morale, as well as some choice hot drinks. All dietary requirements can be happily catered for. If you have any questions please feel free to ask.

The Borealis Team

FAQ

What do I need in a Mothership Jacket?

JD- Generally when we think about a mothership it’s most for its insulation value, so imagine stopping for lunch where we don’t want to take our outer layers off but we want to essentially wrap ourselves in a ‘duvet’ to keep warm while we sit still. We can then chuck this back in the pack and carry on with the activities

Jeremias- My personal Mothership jacket is a big puffy and warm jacket. And when I say big, I mean BIG, I'm about 170cm and the one I have is 3XL Function over Form and this guarantees me to not have to fuss around when stopping or when getting cold and it allows plenty of air to be trapped to keep me warm.

Adam- It is always tricky giving a one size fits all approach with clothing as everyones metabolism and cold-comfort-tolerance is so varied. However this environment could see very cold conditions and so the higher the down insulation value of a jacket the better, i appreciate that has an associated price tag! My preference and of those i work with in Canada is for a large down outer layer. Well worth searching for 2nd hand jackets on line and not buying new as these will become a work horse item prone to a degree of wear and tear if worn whilst processing fire wood or installing/lighting a wood stove for example.

What kind of Sleeping bag do I need?

Adam- As for your sleeping bag i strongly suggest looking into securing a new or second hand -20 bag. Again if we get a week of -35 you will be pleased you did! The tent temperature should hover around zero degrees but even this being the case I’ve always found that extra buffer a good bench mark for customers' comfort in general. A liner is a good addition but best not to rely on this making up the deficit in your current bag. Ideally you will sleep very comfortably in only your base layers allowing the bag to be warmed by you and then retain this heat efficiently. For clarity we will only have the stove running at the absolute lowest smoulder overnight to help prevent inconvenient ice build up within the tent, hence the emphasis for our clients to ensure adequate sleeping comfort.

JD- If at all possible you want to invest in a good sleeping bag where the comfort rating, not the extreme rating, gets down to minus 20C. Carinthia make excellent bags. Down or synthetic work well, synthetic being more robust but bulkier. If you can’t justify to associated price tag, which I totally understand, then you could investigate bringing two sleeping bags which you could layer up. This would require the outer bag to be sized bigger so that it doesn’t crush the loft of your inner bag thereby reducing its insulation. If you have any questions on this topic, please do ask us as it makes a huge impact of your enjoyment of the trip.

Travel to Northern Soul

Clients travelling to Northern Soul Journey from the UK have taken several routes in the past. One of the most cost effective ways is to flight to Stockholm, and take the overnight train to Lulea arriving on the Monday morning for the trips. Others fly in over the weekend before the trip and spend day or so in Lulea to take in the sights and generally add to their holiday with a city aspect. Once in Lulea you then need to travel to Northern Soul Journey’s Homestead. This can sometimes feel daunting for those new to travelling abroad, but we are here to help with that too; often the simplest way is to share a taxi with other guests on the trip. The Borealis team can liaise with all our guests and help organise taxi shares.

Reviews

How useful was the pre-course information? was there anything you think could be added?: Essential, really thorough and the packing videos shared on Facebook were a great help. Only thing I would add is that main bags are stored outside the tent. Not an issue as they don’t get wet but everything that contain water will freeze i.e wet wipes.

If you were to describe the venue to a friend, what would you say?: Peaceful, on the edge of a lake, felt like home as soon as we arrived.

If the course was catered, was the menu varied and enjoyable?: Meals were excellent. We won’t mention the porridge 😀. Snacks were a bonus I hadn’t expected as well.

Did the instructors support you in your learning? Was enough space given in the tuition for you to practice?: Absolutely, I really liked how it didn’t feel like a them and us instructor/ student relationship. It felt like one team all working together and supporting one another. Fantastic team of instructors.

Was there anything missing from the course that you think would improve it for future attendees?: Nothing, Adam and Jamie explained how the weather really dictated the activities and I felt there was a great balance to every day. I knew we were in good hands before setting off and I loved every minute.

Was there a particular highlight of the course? Or something you got out of it you didn't expect?: The northern lights, that’s a memory that will remain with me forever. I learnt on this trip how to thrive in the cold, I was worried about that before I went but I adapted faster than I thought possible. So glad I did the ice plunge as well that was another high. I liked building snow shelters and sleeping outside for two nights, making a backpack that was really comfortable and learning to make ski shoes.

If someone was unsure about booking a place, what would you say to them?: Don’t let the thought of the cold put you off. You really can thrive in the cold environment and when else will you get to experience living outside in the snow for a week? Go for it. You’ll be in great hands with Howl.

Andrew - 2023