Dalarna: Part 3 - Storstupet, Styggforsen

30 April 2018

Ta-da, this is where we slept the night before. Cozy little hut in Storstupet. Well, it was not cozy when we reached there at night in pitch black and I was afraid of what may appear. So, I survived sleeping outdoors during winter. Yay! Okay, maybe one can't call it outdoors when we slept inside a hut. It was about 1 hour walk from the entrance.

Storstupet is a deep canyon along Ämåns race in Orsa municipality , Dalarna. The rock walls of the canyon consist of red sandstone, red-brown porphyry and gray-black diabas and shifts in different shades. A narrow railway bridge belonging to the inland lane passes here above Ämån 34 meters above the water surface. The bridge was built in 1902 by Axel Björkman . Above the Great Falls, Siljansleden usually passes over a suspension bridge, but this was razed in 2015 by the snow melting / ice flood. Source from Wikipedia.

Me trying to remove the moose poo from my shoes. There were so many on the ground that it is impossible to avoid them.

Next up - Styggforsen.

Styggforsen is a waterfall and a nature reserve in Dalarna County, Sweden. The waterfall is located in the village of Boda, 20 kilometres to the north of Rättvik. It lies at the eastern edge of the Siljan Ring a prehistoric impact crater which was formed 377 million years ago during the Devonian period when a meteorite struck the Earth's surface. The bolide was estimated to be about 4 kilometres in diameter and was travelling at around 100,000 kilometres per hour, causing a vertical realignment of the horizontal rock strata and a depression of the bedrock upon collision. This had a profound effect upon the local environment, creating many of the geological features which exist to this day such as Lake Siljan to the south-west and Styggforsen. The river Styggforsån is interrupted by the waterfall which is 36 meters high and composed of a column of Ordovician limestone. The base of the waterfall abuts a dike of brecciated quartz which is believed to predate the impact event. Source from Wikipedia.

The horizontal rock strata. In simple words, the earth got folded up 90 degrees. One can see different layers of rock in this rock strata. Parts of the walkway were still covered by snow and ice. Brr.. 

And the drive back to Stockholm starts. Total distance drove = 1070km.