*Giitu means ‘Thank you’ in the local Sámi language
April 2021. I’m standing on a glacier in Stora Sjöfallet National Park, Sweden, crying with awe. I am—after skiing one of the best runs of my life, after spending ten days here working on a film called Longing for Àhkká—now looking out over a canvas I cannot describe with words. It’s a place of never-ending beauty, a place that feels eternal; mountain tops run as far as the eye can see, deep into Sarek National Park. I already know I want to come back to explore this area more.
In the months to follow, Sarek whispered my name. The memory of that vast beauty was imprinted in my very soul, and Sarek’s call felt strong. But there are so many possibilities in the park, it’s almost hard to pick one objective, so I called one of my best friends, Albert—a lover of mountains who has had a special connection with Sarek for quite some time—to ask him what we should ski. He simply said, “Låddebákte.”
“You have to ski the couloir,” he continued. “It´s the coolest run in Sweden in my opinion. But with Sarek, you have to expect crazy weather, howling winds and cold temps.”
And so the seed was planted. But it was not until the following spring that we could set off. We planned to be out for twelve days, with the aim to make our way to a Låddebákte couloir called ‘Lådderännan’, roughly 30km in and three days away. If we saw something that caught our eye, something in our flow, we would ski that too. We wanted
