Anders NorénModify

2025-10-04 18:00:00

In the summer of 2023, I spent two months hiking 1640 kilometers along the Swedish mountain chain, from the Grövelsjön mountain station in the south to the point where the borders of Sweden, Norway, and Finland meet in the far north. This winter, I’ll be doing that trip again, but with my trail runners and backpack replaced with backcountry skis and a 35 kilo sled. The winter version of the adventure is called Vita bandet, or the White Ribbon in English.

Like for the summer version, it’s up to you to decide which route to follow, as long as you remain in the fjäll region of Sweden and Norway. Since every White Ribbon follows a different path, the length and duration of the adventure varies from person to person. For the 18 people who completed the White Ribbon in 2024, the average distance was 1 292 kilometers, divided across 62 days on the trail on average.

When me and Rebecka moved to the Swedish fjäll in the fall of 2023, I had barely stood on a pair of skis since high school and had never been out winter camping. I suspected it wasn’t for me. Friends had told me that it’s harder work than summer camping and leaves little room for mistakes, especially when you’re out alone, and the amount of gear I’d require was daunting. Still, I decided to give it a try in the forest close to out apartment on a not-too-cold night that January, with our summer tent and my new winter sleeping bag just barely fitting inside my backpack. I soon realized that I enjoyed hiking in the winter just as much as in summer. It’s more demanding for sure, but there’s nothing quite like pitching your tent on a meter of snow and being completely comfortable in your sleeping bag in temperatures as low as -30°C (-22°F).

I registered my adventure with Fjällfararnas Vita & Gröna band for the 2025 season, knowing that I would probably have to delay it to 2026 to have enough time to prepare, which is what ended up happening. In March this year, I instead did a 13 day ski tour of the Southern Kungsleden trail. In addition to testing my gear and routines, I wanted to make sure I would actually enjoy being out on long trips in the wintertime. I did. When the ski season was over (unusually early, due to a bad winter), I dealt with my post-hike restlessness as best I know how: By planning for the next one.

Just like the Green Ribbon, the White Ribbon requires a ton of planning and preparations. You need to figure out your route, decide how to handle resupplies on the trail, and choose the countless pieces of gear you’ll depend on for transport, shelter, food and warmth in conditions including everything from storm winds in the freezing cold to unexpected thaws and rain. Fortunately for me, I love planning hikes almost as much as I love going on them. You can jump directly to the section you’re interested in through the links below.

• The Route
• The Supplies
• The Gear

My planned start date for the White Ribbon is four months from now, on February 8, 2026. You can follow my preparations for the adventure on my Instagram, where I’ll also post daily updates from the trail.

The Route

Planning a route for the White Ribbon is in some ways a fools errand, since the route that looked doable from the comfort of your home office might be impossible due to the conditions on the trail on that particular day, like a large snow dump or an untimely thaw. Still, you need a planned route in order to estimate your supplies, so in addition to my main route, I have many, many backup routes for different sections of the trail.

For the Green Ribbon, my primary goal for the route was that I wanted to avoid overlaps with my previous hikes in the Swedish mountains. I don’t need to worry about that for the White Ribbon, since my wintertime experience of the Swedish mountain chain north of my home county Härjedalen is nonexistent. Another difference from my Green Ribbon is that I’ll avoid travelling off-trail on the White Ribbon. Instead, I’ll stick to marked ski and snowmobile trails as much as possible. I’m not as experienced with long winter trips, I’ll be travelling solo, and going off-trail in winter is a lot tougher than in summer, so I don’t feel comfortable taking the road less travelled.

I’ve mapped out my planned route in Gaia GPS, where it comes out to 1307 kilometers. You can find the route in its entirety here. The map layer I’m using can be seen through the Min Karta service, which is run by the national mapping agency Lantmäteriet. I’m planning on an average of 20 kilometers per day, including rest days, which comes out to an estimated 65 days or so. That estimate is bound to be incorrect, and even though I tend to do more kilometers than I’ve planned rather than fewer, I’ve taken an extra week off from work just in case.

For inspiration, I’ve looked at the routes used by previous white ribboners, which are listed on the Fjällfararnas Vita & Gröna band website.

Section 1: Grövelsjön – Storlien

My first four days on the trail will be almost identical to my last four days on Södra Kungsleden last year, taking me from Grövelsjön in Dalarna through the Rogen nature reserve to my girlfriends family cabin in Fjällnäs, Härjedalen. From Fjällnäs, I’ll go north over Långbrottfjället and down to the homestead Klinken, and then continue north to Storlien via the Fältjägarstugan mountain cabin and Helags, Sylarna and Blåhammaren mountain stations, which only have the unmanned emergency rooms open that early in the season. Fältjägarstugan and Helags seem to be the most common places for white ribboners to be trapped by snowstorms, so I’m hoping I’ll be lucky with the weather here.

Section 2: Storlien – Gäddede

From Storlien, I’ll continue north on snowmobile trails, first to the Skalstugan cabin, and then to the Anjan mountain station and Kolåsen mountain hotel. I’ll have a resupply box waiting for me at Kolåsen. Next, I’ll head east on snowmobile trails to the village Olden where I’ll hopefully get a chance to meet the Green and White Ribbon legend Stig at the village community center, and then turn north up to the town Valsjöbyn where I can resupply at the store. North of Valsjöbyn is the large nature reserve Hotagen, where snowmobiles are prohibited and there are no ski trails, so crossing it will probably be pretty tough. My plan is to stay on elevation for as long as possible, following the route I used through Hotagen on my Green Ribbon along the Norwegian border, until I reach the northern edge of the nature reserve and ski down to the road leading to the town Gäddede. Pretty much everyone doing the White and Green Ribbon pass through here.

Section 3: Gäddede – Hemavan

I’ll follow snowmobile trails over the lakes and mountains north of Gäddede until I’ve reached Klimpfjäll, where there’s a nice hotel and a store. I suspect I’ll take my first rest day either here or in Gäddede. From Klimpfjäll, my plan is to follow the Lapplandsleden trail all the way to Hemavan. I’ve heard some bad things about the elevation changes on the northern end of Lapplandsleden in winter, so I’ll play that section by ear and maybe take a detour via Tärnaby if I grow tired of the climbs.

Section 4: Hemavan – Abisko

This is by far the section that I’m most excited about on my White Ribbon. The King’s Trail was my first experience with long-distance trails when I hiked it back in 2021, and I’m eager to revisit it in winter. I’ll follow it all the way from Hemavan to Abisko, passing through Ammarnäs, Jäckvik, Kvikkjokk and Saltoluokta. The King’s Trail is a popular destination for international visitors, so I can expect to meet a lot more people on this section of the White Ribbon.

Section 5: Abisko – Treriksröset

After a rest day or two at the Abisko mountain station, I’ll start the final section of my White Ribbon by crossing the massive lake Torneträsk to the northeast. After that, ‘ll spend another week or so on the large fjäll to the east of the Norwegian border before I reach the Pältsastugan cabin, which is the northernmost building in all of Sweden. From there, it’s just another ten kilometers to Treriksröset where I will have completed my White Ribbon.

When the celebrations are done, I need to ski another 15-20 kilometers to reach civilization in Kilpisjärvi, Finland. From there, I have a few days on busses and trains ahead of me before I make it back to our home in Härjedalen.

The Supplies

There are broadly speaking two approaches to supplies on long-distance hikes: Resupply from stores you pass along the way, or prepare boxes with supplies before you head out and send them to mountain stations, hotels and stores to hold until you arrive. For my Green Ribbon, I mostly relied on sending out supply boxes, so I decided that I would try the other approach on my White Ribbon and buy as much as possible on the trail. Both approaches come with their own drawbacks.

If you buy supplies from stores you pass on the way, you can buy whatever you’re in the mood for on that day, and only as much as you think you’ll need until you reach the next store. On the other hand, you’re limited to the selection of goods available at that particular store. That selection can be very limited, and is often poorly suited for cooking on the trail. Neither volume nor weight is as much of a limitation in winter, though, and you generally don’t need to worry about food going bad due to the low temperatures. Food freezing is a much bigger issue.

Sending food in supply boxes means that you can get pretty much whatever food you want, as long as it isn’t fresh. It’s generally cheaper to buy food at home than in the stores on the trail. The downside is that it’s hard to predict what you’ll be in the mood for a few months down the road, and how hungry you’ll be. If you don’t send enough food, you can almost always supplement from a store, but it seems to be more common that people send too much and have to carry the excess. I made that mistake on my Green Ribbon, and ended up leaving quite a few freeze dried meals that wouldn’t fit in my backpack in the kitchen at the Anjan mountain station. I hope someone found them useful.

Another thing to keep in mind: Buying food and fuel from stores, hotels, mountain stations and cabins on the trail is a good way to help them stay in business. Without them there to sell supplies or receive supply boxes, the White and Green Ribbon would be a lot more difficult.

I’ll start my trip with about four days of supplies. That’s enough to get me to Fjällnäs, where I’ll have a supply box waiting for me at my girlfriends’ family cabin. There’s also a great grocery store nearby called Hamra livs. I’ll pass several mountain stations with small stores run by the Swedish Tourist Association in northern Jämtland, but too early in the season for them to be open. That means that the next open store I’ll pass will be the supermarket in Storlien, which is absolutely massive due to the many, many Norwegians coming across the border to buy sweets, booze and tobacco, which are cheaper on the Swedish side of the border.

After Storlien, I won’t pass another store until I arrive in Valsjöbyn in another ten days or so. Instead of carrying ten days worth of food from Storlien, I’m going to send a supply box to the mountain station Kolåsen, which is only four days from Storlien. That will be the only box I send in the mail for my White Ribbon. On the rest of the trip, I’ll buy food from stores and mountain stations. You can find an extensive list of the stores and stations providing different types of services between Grövelsjön and Treriksröset on the Fjällfararnas Vita & Gröna Band website.

Getting enough calories in you is a challenge on any long hike, but especially in the wintertime, when the body has to burn extra calories just to keep the body temperature up. I failed pretty spectacularly at this on my Green Ribbon hike. I’d lost a ton of weight by the end of the hike, and struggled to stay warm at night as a result.

For the White Ribbon, I’ll be aiming for a daily intake of 4000 calories on days when I’m on trail, and a lot more when I’m staying indoors in the towns I pass on the way. This is what I’m planning on eating:

• Breakfast: Granola and powdered milk (~600 kcal)
• Lunch: Two 80 g flapjack (~750 kcal)
• Dinner: Freeze dried meals (~550 kcal), sometimes proper cooked food (with more than ~550 kcal)
• Snacks: Protein bars, dried meat, bierwurst, etc (~650 kcal)
• Dessert: Chocolate, candy, etc (~1500 kcal)

When in town, I’ll eat everything.

The Gear

When me and my partner Rebecka moved to the mountains two years ago, I didn’t own any gear designed for ski touring. No skis, no winter tent, no sled, no shovel – nothing. I’ve spent a lot of time, energy, and yes, money on ski touring gear since then. The benefit of knowing almost from the outset that I had a White Ribbon in my future is that I made every purchase with that in mind, so I wouldn’t make any good-enough-for-now purchases that I would later want to replace with different gear.

My first instinct after my experiences with ultralight backpacking gear in the summer was to go as lightweight as possible in winter as well, with a loadout built around bringing a backpack instead of a sled. There are plenty of YouTube hikers from North America successfully using UL gear in the winter, like Justin Outdoors, but they aren’t as commonplace in the Swedish mountains, where our low tree line means that winter storms can be extremely fierce. I abandoned my lightweight winter dream pretty quickly, and instead opted for a more traditional winter gear setup that’s been thoroughly battle tested in Swedish conditions. I decided that my loved ones are worried enough about my solo winter adventures without me being a lightweight winter gear trailblazer.

Instead of a backpack, I’ll be using a sled to transport my gear. You’re less weight sensitive when you use a sled, since you’re only feeling the weight when you’re pulling it on a flat surface or an incline. When you’re standing still or going downhill, the weight of the sled is on the ground instead of on your back. That doesn’t mean you can’t feel the difference between pulling 30 kilos and 60 kilos, though. I’ve looked at every item on my pack list with a critical eye and asked myself if it’s really needed, and if it is, tried to find the lightest item for the job that doesn’t sacrifice functionality, reliability, or safety.

Same as for my summer trips, I used the service Lighterpack to create a pack list and tally up the weight of every single item I’ll bring with me. You can find that list here. As I’m writing this, my planned base weight is 28 kilos, and I expect the sled to generally weigh around 35-40 kilos when fully loaded with food and fuel. Enough to make you sweat and curse when going up a steep hill, but still a number that I’m very happy with given the tent and sleep system I’m bringing.

For even more information about good gear for the White Ribbon, I recommend Johanna Öhrlings video about the setup she used. No English subtitles, sadly. For a video in English, check out Paolo Peraltas 3 hour walkthrough of his White Ribbon gear.

Transportation

I’m using a pair of Åsnes Nansen BC backcountry touring skis. They are 205 centimeters tall, pretty wide and quite heavy, but they give me better float on deep snow than skinnier models. They are fairly easy to turn for their size, and the steel edges help give me purchase on icy snow. Åsnes backcountry skis have a locking system for their brand of short skins called Skinlock, and I’ll have a pair of short skins in a nylon mohair mix on my skis for most of the trip. For the steep climbs, I’ll use traditional full-length climbing skins in mohair. For the really steep climbs, I take my skis off and walk in my ski boots.

Those boots are the Alfa Outback BC 2.0. They are warm and quite comfortable, but I still use two layers of socks and preventative blister tape to keep my feet happy and blister-free. The biggest selling point of the Outback for me is the convenience of the built-in gaiters which keep the snow out of my socks. My ski poles are an adjustable 2-section model from Åsnes called Combat, which I chose not for their eye-catching color or combat-worthiness but for the extra-wide 125 mm baskets. I haven’t had a chance to try the poles in snow yet, but they seem sturdy and lightweight and come with replaceable baskets, which was the main selling point compared to my old pair of ski poles.

Given the tent and sleeping bag I’m using (more on that below), a sled was really the only option for me. I’m using a 170 cm Jemtlander sled, with two 150 L sled bags and the Jemtlander expedition harness. The benefit of two sled bags over the traditional fixed chapel is that the bags are easy to move from your sled to your tent or into a mountain cabin. I used the Jemtlander last season as well, and even though it is big and pretty heavy, I found it to work well in most snow conditions. My only regret is that I probably would have been fine with the lighter 140 cm model with 200 L capacity.

I’ll also bring my go-to day pack, which is the Durston Wapta 30 liter backpack. Some people wear a backpack while skiing for items they want easy access to, but my Wapta will be packed most of the time since I sweat too much if I wear it while pulling the sled. I’m bringing it for day trips and for shopping in towns.

Shelter

My tent is a Hilleberg Nammatj 3 GT tunnel tent, which is part of Hillebergs Black Label series designed to withstand hurricane winds and heavy snowload. It’s a real tank of a tent, with a thick silicone-coated nylon fabric and three sturdy 10mm aluminium poles that give the tent its structure. I would have been fine with Hillebergs lighter Red Label version of the model, the Nallo 3 GT, but the sturdier materials give me a bit more confidence when camping above the tree line.

The “3“ in Nammatj 3 GT means that it’s a three-person tent – at least on paper. It would be a tight squeeze for three in the wintertime, but it fits two people without issues. It’s a palace for me all on my lonesome. The “GT” suffix stands for the large extended vestibule that comes in handy for melting snow and storing the sled bags. I definitely could have made due with a smaller tent, like the two-person version of the Nammatj, but the extra space will be welcome during all of the long evenings I’ll spend in the tent, and the weight penalty in going up a size is pretty small at 300 g. I also wanted a tent big enough for two people and two dogs for future winter trips, since I’m holding out hope that I’ll convince my partner to join me for one down the road. Hilleberg winter tents are worth the eye-watering price given the build quality and excellent consumer support, but I’m not planning on buying more than one of them.

I’m bringing ten 31 cm Hilleberg snow and sand pegs. When I’m tenting somewhere exposed, my skis can be used to secure additional pitching points. I’ll also use the Hilleberg sled pack, which allows me to store the tent on top of my sled with the tent poles partially inserted in the channels. It makes the daily task of pitching the tent and taking it down again easier and faster, especially when you’re alone. Highly recommended.

Sleep System

Temperatures of -20°C are common during Swedish winters, and they are sometimes as low as -35°C, so you need a sleep system that can keep you warm (or at the very least safe) in those temperatures. My sleeping bag is a discontinued model from Marmot called Col Membrain, which has a water resistant lamination and a comfort rating of -29°C. It’s a pretty heavy piece of gear at 2070 g, but it should see me through any temperatures the Swedish winter can throw at me. If things get really extreme, I can sleep in my down jacket and pants for some extra insulation and bring along a warm water bottle rolled up in a dry bag.

Beneath my sleeping bag, I have an inflatable Therm-a-Rest NeoAir XTherm NXT MAX Large sleeping pad, with an R-value (measurement of insulation) of 7.3. It’s tough to beat when it comes to ground insulation for really cold temperatures, and the extra width and rectangular shape of the MAX version adds some comfort when I use it with my bulky winter sleeping bag. I also bring a closed cell foam pad, the classic Therm-a-Rest Z Lite Sol, which I can add to my sleep system when it’s extremely cold. On most days I just use it as an oversized sit pad when I’m taking breaks, but it also doubles as an emergency pad if my inflatable NeoAir pops and I’m unable to repair it in the field.

A new item on my gear list for this season is something called an arctic bedding. It’s basically a huge storage pod for your inflated sleeping pad and sleeping bag that you keep secured to the top of your sled during the day when you’re skiing. When you’ve pitched your tent, you just move the bedding inside, unzip the lid, and you’re ready to go to bed. In the morning, you zip it back up and secure it to your sled when you’re ready to get moving again. It saves you a lot of time on inflating and deflating your sleeping pad and stuffing your sleeping bag into a dry bag, and it can also be used as a couch during the day. The problem with many arctic beddings is that they aren’t fully waterproof, which gets you in trouble on days with wet snow or rain, which are unavoidable during Swedish winters. For my White Ribbon, I’ll be using a new product from Exped called Dura Bedding, which is built for Scandinavian conditions with waterproof materials and sealed seams. On paper, it seems like it should be up to the task. It’s also pretty lightweight at 990 g compared to many of the competitors. It’s new for the upcoming winter season, so I’m looking forward to trying it out on my test trips ahead of the White Ribbon.

Cook System

The cook system is even more critical in the wintertime than in summer, since you depend on it not only for preparing meals, but also for melting snow. Most winter campers use multifuel stoves, often with gasoline, and for good reason. They’re fast, fuel efficient, and work well in low temperatures. I won’t be using one. Instead, I’ll bring an old fashioned alcohol/spirit stove. Gasoline stoves require regular maintenance and are prone to clogging, and often end up requiring repairs on long trips. In comparison, an alcohol stove is close to foolproof and would probably still be useable after a tank rolled over it. They’re also quiet, which makes for a more pleasant time in the tent when you’re done skiing for the day. For those benefits, I’m willing to put up with them being a bit slower and less fuel-efficient.

I’ll be bringing the classic Trangia B25 spirit burner, paired with the smaller size (27) Trangia windshields. I’ll also be using the FV21 stove pre-heater. You often hear people say that alcohol stoves don’t work in cold temperatures, but with the pre-heater, I’ve used the Trangia alcohol stove down to -30°C without issues. The fuel consumption does go up in temperatures that low. My snow melting pot is the MSR Big Titan Kettle 2L, which is very easy to use thanks to the spout and the handles on the side, and pretty lightweight at 186 g. Sadly, it seems to have been discontinued. I’m also bringing a Trangia UL frypan so I can fry me some sausages when the mood strikes.

Safety

There are always risks when you’re out in the mountains, especially when you’re on your own, and those risks are amplified by low temperatures in the wintertime. Being conscious of them and making the right decisions for any given circumstance is more important than what safety equipment you have in your sled, but making the right decisions starts at home when you’re packing your sled bags.

One of the requirements for registering your White Ribbon with the organization Fjällfararnas Vita & Gröna Band is that you have to bring an emergency beacon. There’s not a lot of cell phone reception in the Swedish mountains and there’s rarely other people nearby, so the emergency beacon can mean the difference between life and death if you’re injured and unable to get back to civilization by your own steam. I have a Garmin Inreach Mini, which I will also use to track my location so my friends and family know where I am at any given time. For smaller injuries that I can treat myself, I have a first aid kit with plasters, bandages, medicine, and so on.

Bones are not the only things that can break when you’re on the trail, and I have spares for all the important gear. That includes an extra ski binding, spare baskets for the ski poles, and a repair section for the tent poles. My winter repair kit also has Tenacious Tape, duct tape, Therm-a-Rest repair patches, a sewing kit, steel wire, zip ties, seam grip, glue, extra guy lines for the tent, and more so I can repair my sleeping pad, sleeping bag, and clothes. My wintertime multitool is the Leatherman Skeletool CX, which has pliers, bits, and a decent sized blade.

No discussion of wintertime safety is complete without the shovel. In the unlikely event that your tent is ripped to pieces in a storm, you can create an emergency shelter by digging a bivouac if the snow is deep enough. A less dramatic and more commonplace usecase for the shovel to improve your comfort in the snow. I always dig a pit for my legs in the tent vestibule, so I can sit properly in the tent before bedtime. On sunny days you can also dig a “solgrop”, loosely translated to a sun pit, which is a hole in the snow where you can enjoy the warmth from the sun while sheltered from the wind. My shovel is the Mammut Alugator Ultra, which is a certified avalanche rescue shovel of a decent size that only weighs 395g.

Another piece of safety gear I’m bringing is a reuseable gel hand warmer from Lifesystems. I haven’t needed it on a trip yet, but it’s good to know it’s there if I ever feel like my fingers or toes are in danger of getting frostbite.

Electronics

I’m bringing two power banks of the same make and model: the Nitecore Summit 20000. The Summit is designed for low temperatures and comes with an insulation carrying bag. It has a preheating function that raises the temperature of the power bank before it starts charging, which Nitecore claims increases its available capacity compared to regular power banks. I write “claims“ because I haven’t done any comparisons of my own. I’ve been very happy with the Summit, but most people do fine with regular, non-preheating power banks in the wintertime as long as they warm them up a little with their body heat before they use them. I pair them with an Anker wall plug with two USB C outlets and two braided USB C cables from Apple, so I can charge them simultaneously. I also have a braided USB C to Firewire cable from Cable Matters for my Garmin Inreach Mini.

My headlamp is a Silva Explore 5, which has a maximum output of 700 lumen and also charges with USB C. If I was planning on doing a lot of skiing in the evenings I’d probably bring a stronger headlamp, but I’ll try to limit myself to skiing while the sun is up. On my start date of February 8, the sun rises at 8:18 and sets at 16:32 at Grövelsjön, so the days will be pretty short when I set off. I’ll also bring a small digital thermometer from ThermoWorks, which can tell me the lowest temperature of the past 24 hours. More for fun than for any practical use.

Another thing that I do for fun while I’m out on adventures is to photograph and film them for my Instagram. For that, I’ll be using my iPhone 16 Pro together with some sort of tripod. I’m choosing between the lightweight Joby TelePod Mobile (up to 56 cm) and the sturdier Joby Compact Light (up to 131 cm), and I’m leaning towards the latter despite it being more than 600 g heavier. It’s a luxury item, but if it makes documenting the trip easier and more fun, I think it’s worth it. If all else fails I suppose I can use it as a spare tent peg.

Conclusion

If you’re still reading this, I a) am shocked, and b) hope it’s been useful! If nothing else, writing all of this down has helped me review my plans yet again and make some more changes to my route and pack list. I’m sure I’ll keep making changes right up until I pack my sled bags and head off to Grövelsjön, four months from now. I can’t wait.

The post Planning my White Ribbon appeared first on Anders Norén.

2025-09-12 20:11:42

I haven’t written a lot about hiking gear here, but if this blog is supposed to be a reflection of my interests, I really should be. Ever since I got into long-distance hiking five years ago, reading up on backpacks, tents, sleep systems and camping stoves has almost become an interest in and of itself. I took it to the extreme before my two month hike along the Swedish mountain chain in 2023, spending an unseemly amount of hours of research (and yes, money) to get the weight of my backpack down without sacrificing comfort.

The most important item on any summertime gear list is the tent, and the one I eventually settled on was the Tarptent Stratospire Li. After almost 100 nights in it spread across three seasons in the Swedish mountains, I feel ready to review it.

The Stratospire Li is an ultralight double-wall and double-door two-person tent designed to be pitched with trekking poles, manufactured in Nevada City, California by Tarptent. The “Lithium“ version of the tent is built with Dyneema composite fabric, DCF, which makes it much lighter (and much more expensive) than the original polyester and nylon Stratospire. Other than that, the two tents are pretty much identical. Tarptent has also released a version of the design built with Ultra TNT, but that’s currently out of stock due to the US tariff situation.

Before getting into my opinions about the Stratospire Li, we should talk about what my requirements were. Like I wrote above, I got the Tarptent Stratospire Li ahead of my Green Ribbon in 2023, which is a hike from the southern to the northern end of the Swedish mountain chain. Much of the hike is spent above the tree line on the Swedish fjäll, where heavy rains are frequent and you’re exposed to gusts that can reach storm levels (~25 m/s, ~90 km/h, ~56 mph).

In previous seasons, my go-to solo tent was the Hilleberg Enan, which I used on the King’s Trail in 2021. The Enan is a really sturdy little tent with its 9 mm poles and nylon fabric, and its bivy-like shape and small footprint makes it extremely resistant to strong winds. Unfortunately, that small footprint makes it uncomfortable if you’re on the taller side, and the strong materials aren’t fun to carry. The packed weight of my Enan, modified with additional guylines, was 1300 g. Pretty heavy for a one-person tent. I wanted its replacement to be much lighter, spacious enough to keep my 192 cm (6.3 feet) frame comfortable for two months, and able to withstand conditions on the Swedish fjäll.

The Tarptent Stratospire Li quickly became a candidate. I spent a lot of time reading the Backpacking Light review by Andrew Marshall, which provides a good walkthrough of the features in the tent (although being published back in 2019, some of it is out of date with the current version of the tent). He praises its low weight, spacious interior, and stability in strong wind. Bingo, right? You’d think so. I became overly obsessed with shedding pack weight ahead of the Green Ribbon, so instead of the Stratospire Li, I ordered the Notch Li, which is the one-person version of the Stratospire design. Lighter than the Stratospire Li, obviously, but with a footprint even smaller than the Hilleberg Enan. I tried it out on a single hike, quickly realized my mistake, sold it and bought the Stratospire Li with the solid interior instead.

The most common complaint against the Stratospire Li is that it’s difficult to pitch well, and that’s been my experience too. You get used to it pretty quickly, but compared to tents with a more conventional rectangular shape and four corners to pitch, like that of the Durston X-Mid, the hexagonal shape of the Stratospire tents with a minimum six stake pitch is a bit confusing until you get the routine down. According to Tarptent, the hexagon shape gives the tent rigidity due to its “symmetrically balanced tension lines”, and I don’t doubt that. When pitched correctly, it feels incredibly sturdy considering the lightweight materials. In addition to the six ground-level stake points, there are two attachment points for guy lines in the ridge line on top of the tent. I found those guy lines to be too short out of the box, so I replaced them with guy lines twice as long for additional stability.

Two of the six corners of the tent have carbon fiber struts that Tarptent call PitchLoc, which increase the interior volume, give the tent stability and can be opened for additional ventilation. When pitching the tent, you first stake down the two opposing PitchLoc corners, then the two corners to the right of them, so those four corners together form a rectangular shape, leaving the corners with the vestibule doors. Next, you lift up the tent at the vestibule door corners, zip open the top of the doors, insert your trekking poles with the handle facing down, insert the tips of your trekking poles into the grommets in the tent ridgeline, and stake down the corners. You can find a video showing the setup here.

Dyneema doesn’t stretch like silnylon and other materials do, so it can be pretty tricky to stake down all of the six corners while keeping the fabric taut and the shape symmetrical, especially when there’s limited ground space or when the ground is rocky or uneven. Early on, I had to adjust the corners after the fact more often than not. These days, the first pitch of the season can end up a bit wonky, but the routine comes back to me pretty quickly. I haven’t timed myself, but I think I usually pitch the tent in two or three minutes.

When the tent is up, the Stratospire Li feels sturdy and very roomy when used solo. Mine hasn’t housed two people yet and likely won’t in the future either, but I can fit myself, all of my gear and one dog inside of the inner tent without any issues, with plenty of room to spare in the two sizeable vestibules for storing my backpack and cooking. The interior space is 2,18 by 1,32 meters, with about 1,10 meters to the ceiling of the inner tent, which is enough for me to sit up straight. The vestibules are about 0,84 meters deep at the widest point. If I don’t manage to get a good pitch, the footbox of my sleeping bag can end up pushing the inner wall against the outer when I’m lying straight in the tent, so I’ve made it a habit to keep my sleeping pad on the diagonal inside the inner tent. That likely won’t be an issue for you if you’re shorter than 190 cm.

My version has two interior pockets next to the doors, but whatever I put in them usually ends up on the floor due to the lack of vertical stitching on the pockets, so I tend to not use them at all. There are loops on either side of the ridgeline in the roof, and I have added a guy line with a line runner that I can use to dry clothes and hang a lamp. A small bit of design ingenuity in the tent is that it has magnetic fly door ties, so rolling up the doors of the outer tent and keeping them out of the way is really easy. The inner doors on my model only have two lines that you tie together over the rolled-up door, which is a lot more finicky. The most recent version of the Stratospire has a toggle with a loop on the inner door instead, like Hilleberg tents.

The Tarptent Stratospire Li comes with six 16 cm aluminium DAC J stakes. I replaced them with 18 cm Hillberg Y pegs, which I find give better grip in soft ground (common on the Swedish fjäll), and added two 15 cm Y-Peg UL for the optional guy lines attached to the ridgeline. The pegs add a few grams to the weight of the tent, but I’ll happily carry a few grams extra if it gives me a bit more stability in strong winds. With the Hilleberg pegs and the extra guy lines, the total packed weight of my Stratospire Li comes out to 875.5 g.

Let’s talk about wind performance. I was pretty lucky with the weather on my Green Ribbon, and although I frequently encountered gusts of 10-15 m/s and 20 m/s maybe once, I never had to test the mettle of the Stratospire Li in proper storm winds of 25 m/s. I was pretty careful to avoid exposed tent locations early on in the hike, but as the weeks progressed and I got to know my new tent, I felt confident enough to pick a pretty but exposed tent site over a more sheltered alternative. During those two months, I never felt unsafe, and I didn’t have to go out in the middle of the night to adjust the pitch a single time. It kept me comfortable all the way from my start in Grövelsjön to Abisko, a few days from the finish line, where my partner Rebecka joined me and brought our three-person Hilleberg Helags tent in order to give the two of us some extra space. The Stratospire Li is light enough that I didn’t bother to send it home, but instead carried it all the way to the end of the hike where the borders of Sweden, Norway and Finland meet. It only seemed right for it to join me at the finish line.

The Tarptent Stratospire Li weighs two thirds of my old Hilleberg Enan, and I don’t expect Hilleberg levels of performance from it in really severe winds, but I would definitely recommend it for the conditions you’re likely to encounter on the Swedish fjäll in the summer. Another difference between Hillebergs nylon tents and dyneema tents is that dyneema tents don’t have the same lifespan. Many Hilleberg tents are passed down from generation to generation and can be repaired to extend their life, but after three years and close to a hundred nights in my Stratospire Li, I can feel its retirement drawing closer. There are no tears or holes in it yet, but the fabric has become noticeably worn and thin, despite me babying it as best as I can. I’ll be able to repair it with dyneema patches for a while yet, but in time, the fabric will be worn to the point where it’s beyond fixing. That’s the devil’s bargain of dyneema tents.

Still, it has excelled at everything I’ve asked of it for these three years, and when it comes time to replace it a few years from now, Tarptent will still be at the top of my list of tent manufacturers. I highly recommend the Stratospire Li.

The post Review: Tarptent Stratospire Li in Nordic conditions appeared first on Anders Norén.

2025-07-08 04:28:44

A faux weight is what you get when your browser tries to synthetically recreate a font weight that a website is using without loading the correct font files. If you’ve been on the web for more than a few days and haven’t noticed this happening, you might want to stop reading here, because this is a pet peeve of mine and I’m about to infect you with it.

The screenshot below shows the lovely Source Serif 4, set in regular, italics, bold, and bolded italics. It’s taken in Safari, with font files properly loaded for all of the font weights.

Nice, isn’t it? Source Serif is a beaut. Pay special attention to how the italic letter shapes aren’t just the roman (normal) letters uniformly slanted to the right, but unique letter shapes drawn specifically for italicized text. It’s basically a completely different typeface. In fact, back in the early days of typography, italic type was a distinct style of type from the roman typefaces, so if you were typesetting a book and wanted to emphasize something, you would find an italic typeface that somewhat resembled the roman typeface you were using for the running text. I could go on, but I won’t.

Next, let’s take a look at at the same HTML again, but this time, with only the regular (400) weight of Source Serif 4 loaded on the page.

Ugh. Nails on chalkboard. Since we haven’t included font files for italics, bold, and bolded italics, Safari is trying to synthesize those weights by fattening up and skewing the regular font weight we’ve actually loaded. These are faux weights. Depending on the typeface, the results might pass as bolded or italicized at a glance, but it’s a lot uglier and less readable than if we use the proper weights. Since it can be easy to miss, you often encounter faux weights on production sites in the wild – even high-profile ones.

Fortunately, CSS Fonts Module Level 4 has introduced a way for us to control the behavior of faux weights and make missing font weights easier to spot. The property in question is called font-synthesis, and with it, we can whitelist specific types of faux weights (“synthetic font faces“, if you prefer), or disable them altogether. I recommend the latter.

Here’s the CSS that will make it happen:

body {
    font-synthesis: none;
}

If we return to Source Serif 4 again, the image below shows what it looks like without the right font files loaded and with font synthesis disabled. All of a sudden, it’s very obvious that the font files for the bold and italic text are missing, since Safari is just rendering the bold and italic text with the one regular font file we’ve actually included.

Browser support for font-synthesis is pretty good, and ideally, you’d only need to include it before a site is launched in order to ensure that no faux weights sneak past your QA.

At this point, you might object with the following:

To which I’d say: Maybe, but those are not our only options. Given the number of fully-featured and high quality open source fonts available today, there’s rarely a reason to use one that doesn’t support at least italics, bold, and bolded italics, unless you know with absolute certainty that you won’t need them. That’s never the case if you’re building a site for someone else.

So choose your fonts with care, double-check weights with font-synthesis, and let us make common cause of banishing faux weights from the web.

The post How to disable faux weights with CSS appeared first on Anders Norén.

2025-05-30 21:49:24

I used iA Writer for the very first time on December 19, 2013. I know this because that’s the datestamp of the document that sits at the bottom of my iA Writer file list. In the years since, I’ve used the app to write almost everything, across three years of university studies, three different employments, one freelance career, and lots of different sites about video games, movies, technology, and web development. In addition to most of the stuff I’ve posted here, of course.

I’m not writing this in iA Writer. Recently, I’ve almost completely replaced iA Writer with the text editor and personal knowledge base Obsidian.

A structured text editor

Like iA Writer, Obsidian is a Markdown editor. In the unlikely case you’re not familiar, Markdown is a plain text formatting syntax. To italicize a word, wrap it in asterisks. To create a list, start a new line with a dash. To add a horizontal separator, add three dashes on a line. The point of Markdown is that the structure and formatting of a document should be readable at a glance, even in pure plain text. Once finished, the formatting can easily be applied in editors with Markdown parsers, like the WordPress block editor. Simply paste the Markdown text in the block editor, and the formatting styles are applied.

Many text editors show the Markdown formatting characters more or less as-is. iA Writer does some light inline formatting, like rendering text wrapped in asterisks as italic, but it still shows the asterisks applying the formatting at all times. Headings are bolded, but the hash characters that determine the heading level in Markdown are always shown to the left of the heading text. As you may have guessed, that’s what inspired the styling of content headings on my blog.

Obsidian only shows the Markdown syntax while the element with the Markdown syntax is selected. When it’s not, the styles are rendered as formatted HTML. It’s taken some getting used to after years with iA Writer, but after I tweaked the default styles in Obsidian (more on that later), I’ve grown to like it.

---

Markdown in iA Writer.

---

And in Obsidian, which renders the formatting.

Unlike iA Writer, Obsidian is structured like a knowledge base or wiki, with the full folder hierarchy and their text files shown in the left sidebar. If you’ve ever browsed documentation for any type of online service or developer tool, it will likely look familiar. Since this knowledge base is populated with your own content, it’s up to you to decide what text files to include and how to structure them. When you first launch the app, the sidebar is completely empty. If that gets you excited, Obsidian is probably an app for you.

Since you can collapse and expand all folders, it’s pretty easy to find what you’re looking for regardless of how large or deep your structure is.

This is what my Obsidian folder structure looks like as I’m writing this:

- Attachments (images embedded in text files)
    - [Year]
- Design
    - Assets
- Development
    - Snippets
- Personal
    - Cars
    - Dogs
        - Storm
        - Taki
    - Hikes
    - Home
    - Other
- Projects
    - andersnoren.se
        - Admin
        - Blog
            - [Blog Posts]
        - Themes
            - [Themes]
    - [Other Projects]
- Work
    - Admin
    - [Clients]
        - [Projects]
    - Events

At first, I thought I would only use Obsidian to keep track of static information. Code snippets, design resources, hike plans, project to do lists, and so on. I’ve ended up doing pretty much all of my writing for blog posts in it as well, modifying the folder structure as needed to keep everything neat and tidy. Since everything is synced with the iOS app (as well as Android, Linux, or PC), it’s easy to access information and create new drafts while on the go. It works with iCloud, but I’ve opted to pay for Obsidian Sync ($5/month). Given how much value I get out of it, it seemed a crime not to support the developers in some way.

I don’t put everything in Obsidian, of course. If I want a note easily accessible and secure, I add it to my 1Password vault. I also still open iA Writer every now and then if I want to jot something down quickly, or if I want to copy-paste something from a form in the browser because I’m afraid I’ll lose it in an unintentional reload. (I don’t use the Apple Notes app.) Pretty much everything else finds a home somewhere in my Obsidian vault.

Obsidians shortcomings

My biggest gripe with Obsidian is the reading experience, and especially the spacing between elements. If you add a paragraph, followed by a second level heading, followed by another paragraph, the default spacing looks absolutely terrible:

Ugh. The tightness around the heading makes the document hard to parse at a glance, which is extra noticeable in really large text files. The spacing is equally as stingy around tables, images, embeds, code blocks, and pretty much all elements that are not paragraphs. Initially, I found myself compensating for it by inserting extra line breaks, but that gets you into trouble when you copy your writing and paste it somewhere else.

Fortunately, Obsidian is built with picky designer-developers in mind. The app supports themes that let you modify the appearance of pretty much everything, but rolling my own theme seemed a bit overkill for some spacing tweaks. Besides, there doesn’t seem to be support for custom themes on the iOS app. (There are plenty of community themes to choose from, though.)

Instead, I added my changes to a little CSS file called tweaks.css that Obsidian includes by default and syncs with the document vault. Changes you apply there carry over to wherever you’re logged in, including the iOS app. By using tweaks.css, you can also have a community theme active separately.

By adding the following, I set the bottom spacing of headings to equal the body font size, and the top spacing to three times that:

.cm-line.HyperMD-header {
    padding-bottom: var(--font-text-size) !important;
    padding-top: calc(3 * var(--font-text-size)) !important;
}

That combined with some extra vertical spacing for other common elements improved my experience with Obsidian by leaps and bounds. Unfortunately, some of the calculations in Obsidian seem to count on margins not being used to set spacing between content elements, and when you use padding to set spacing between elements, you can end up with spacing being doubled-up since paddings don’t collapse like vertical margins do. Nitpicky? Maybe, but when you create an app in the “personal knowledge base” product category, you’re going to attract nitpicky users.

My tweaks.css file is still a work in progress (I haven’t even gotten to the typography yet), but I might put it up on GitHub down the line. I’ve also installed the community plugin “Smart Typography“ by Matthew Meyers, which automatically replaces dumb quotes (") with smart/curly quotes (“). An iA Writer feature I found I couldn’t live without.

While it’s great that Obsidian makes it easy for users to fine-tune the appearance of the text editor with CSS and community plugins, they really should do a better job with the default styles. There’s no excuse for a text editor to have a poor reading experience out of the box.

Final thoughts

Obsidian is built with Electron, so unlike iA Writer, it’s not a native Mac app. I’ve found that doesn’t bother me much. It does look a bit awkward alongside other MacOS apps, but it’s still snappy and sturdy. Given that I have Visual Studio Code, Figma, Linear and 1Password open pretty much constantly, I suspect my aversion to non-native apps has been worn down a bit over the years.

There’s still work to be done for Obsidian to offer a first-class visual experience, but if you share my affinity for structuring content and files, I suspect you’ll fall in love with Obsidian just as much as I have.

The post Replacing iA Writer with Obsidian appeared first on Anders Norén.

2025-05-23 22:19:05

Ever since me and Rebecka moved to the Swedish mountains back in 2023, my small collection of books about graphic design and web development have gathered dust in moving boxes in the garage. A couple of weeks ago, they finally got to see the light of day again after I got a new bookshelf set up in my home office. I was surprised by how nostalgic it felt to unpack them all.

While in the process of sorting out which book goes where on my new shiny shelves, I started to think about which of them have been the most useful to me, or meant the most. There’s no shortage of design information and inspiration to be had online, but there’s still something to be said for sitting down in a comfortable chair with a large book and a cup of coffee. Of all of my graphic design books, these five are my favorites right now.

Thinking with Type, by Ellen Lupton

Here’s a question I ask myself every time I enter a book store with a fun graphic design section: Do I need another book about typography? Probably not. I still find one in my bag when I get home at least every other time. Usually, they tread the same ground as the ones I already own, covering the fundamentals of typographic dos and dont’s. I just can’t help myself. If I had to choose a single typography book to recommend to someone, especially someone looking to build a solid foundation for getting deeper into typography, it’d be Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton.

It isn’t the most in-depth book on typography on my shelves (that prize goes to The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst, which is dense), but it covers the fundamentals of pretty much everything, from letters to layouts, with lots of examples of typographical rules being applied in practice, ranging from Johannes Gutenberg to early 2010 websites. The web design examples in my second edition do age the book somewhat, but I’m guessing that those have been updated for the third edition released last year, which also includes more up to date technical information about creating typefaces and using fonts on the web.

Also, there’s a certain charm to the pixelated screenshots of decade old versions of websites like Subtraction and Design Observer, which can now only be seen on Archive.org (with the images if you’re lucky).

Design is a Job, by Mike Monteiro

Saying “Fuck you, pay me” to a certain generation of web designers is likely to bring up an image of Mike Monteiro standing in a stark white conference room, yelling those exact words in front of a captivated CreativeMornings audience. You can still watch the video on YouTube, and once you’re done, I recommend you pick up Design is a Job, which expands on the subject into an entire book.

Unlike the other books on this list, it covers the more practical aspects of being in the design business, like finding, managing and sometimes sacking clients, charging for your time, presenting your work, and dealing with feedback. It’s a good read for any designer, but invaluable if you’re starting out as a freelancer. I turned to it often when I had just set up shop and needed someone to tell me that my clients wouldn’t value my work unless I did.

A Book Apart is no more (RIP), but you can still buy Design is a Job from Mike Monteiro directly. I haven’t read the second edition but it seems to include more information about ethical design, which Mike Monteiro has talked about in a separate presentation that’s also on YouTube. Another quality book on that subject is How To Be A Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul by Adrian Shaughnessy, which was a strong runner up for this list.

Making and Breaking the Grid, by Timothy Samara

I like structure in all things, and pretty much every design I work on has a twelve column grid keeping all of the content neat and tidy. I occasionally try to create something less rigid and more free-form, but I usually come crawling back to the comfort of columns and gutters before long. Grid Systems in Graphic Design by Josef Müller-Brockmann was my first book about grid layouts, and it would probably be the more obvious choice for this list since it’s an undisputable classic. (It also looks great on the shelf.)

However, when I’m looking for layout inspiration, I usually find myself reaching for Making and Breaking the Grid by Timothy Samara instead. It includes a broader selection of example layouts, both old and (relatively) new, and you’d be hard pressed to find much about “breaking the grid” in Josef Müller-Brockmanns book. Since Making and Breaking the Grid came out 20 years after Grid Systems, it also feels written with the assumption that the reader has already read Grid Systems. If in doubt, get them both.

There’s not much about designing grids for the web in either one, of course, but the fundamentals of grid layout can – in theory – be applied to the web just as easily as to posters from the 1960’s. I only wish the WordPress block editor was as grid-friendly in practice.

How to, by Michael Bierut

I don’t have a lot of monographs at home, but I do like this one by Michael Bierut. The dust jacket is starting to become worn from me taking it out and flipping through it. It’s an interesting collection, including his work for Saks Fifth Avenue, Museum of Arts and Design, United Airlines, MIT Media Lab, and more, presented beautifully in a chunky 25×25 centimeter volume with great print quality.

My only real gripe with the book is that there isn’t enough to read about each project. I’d happily take another couple of pages about the challenges for each one; especially since I know I enjoy his writing from another Michael Bierut book on my shelves: Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design. I’ve tried to get hold of his second essay collection, Now You See It and Other Essays on Design, but it seems to be out of print.

A Dictionary of Color Combinations, by Sanzo Wada

This one is actually a recent addition, so it didn’t have to spend two years in a moving box before going up on my shelf. There’s no aspect of design that I struggle with more than color, so I’m always on the hunt for resouces that help me find and combine colors. I bought this little book on the recommendation of Diana Costa, who I work with through Automattic. It’s a collection of 348 different color combinations originally curated by Sanzo Wada (1883-1967) for the 6-volume work Haishoku Soukan (The Complete Collection of Color Combinations), which was published in the 1930s.

There’s no shortage of directories for color combinations online, but the quality is often really poor, the tone inconsistent, and instead of making me feel inspired, browsing through them makes me stick to grayscale for the rest of my life. Flipping through A Dictionary of Color Combinations makes me want to put up new tapestry and pick up watercolor painting. I’ve found myself reaching for it every time my inspiration needs a jolt. Plus, it’s a beautiful little book.

The post My favorite books on graphic design appeared first on Anders Norén.

2025-05-16 22:43:00

Last year, I spent a weekend building my WordPress theme Pulitzer while documenting the whole process in a thread on Twitter. Since then, Twitter has become a hellish nightmare place that I want nothing to do with, so in January this year, I deleted my account and moved over to Bluesky.

The Pulitzer thread and everything else I’ve posted on Twitter was purged in the move, and I’ve been asked a few times if the thread can be read somewhere. Fortunately, I now have somewhere to direct those people to. Birgit Pauli-Haack has published a summary of the entire thread on Gutenberg Times, with screenshots and code snippets and all. Hopefully it’s of some interest if you’re curious about how modern block themes are built.

The post How I built my Pulitzer WordPress theme in a weekend appeared first on Anders Norén.