Thick white ice turns a row of lift cabins into something close to sculpture in Anders Carlsson’s winter photograph from Åreskutan, the 1,420-metre mountain above Åre in central Sweden. The picture became a finalist in Wikimedia Commons’ Picture of the Year contest for 2011.
Cabins, cables and supports are still easy to read beneath the coating, while a sea of cloud lies below and blue shadow separates the ice from a bright sky. It is a picture of engineering and mountain weather meeting at the top of Sweden’s biggest ski area.
Åreskutan and the Åre ski resort
Åreskutan rises above the village of Åre in the province of Jämtland, close to the Norwegian border. Winter tourism here goes back to the 1800s, and the mountain massif holds the largest ski resort area in Sweden. The resort, founded in 1909 and today run by SkiStar, has:
- 46 lifts, including a cable car, a gondola, a funicular and 8 chairlifts;
- 112 runs covering about 101 km, the longest 6.5 km;
- a lift-served vertical drop of 870 metres, from a top lift station at about 1,260 metres;
- four connected areas: central Åre, family-friendly Åre Björnen, Tegefjäll and Duved.
Åre has hosted the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships three times, in 1954, 2007 and 2019, as well as the 1999 mountain bike world championships.
The Åre cable car, Kabinbanan
The best-known lift on the mountain is Kabinbanan, the cable car that opened in 1976 as part of the Åre Project of 1972. Its two 3,190-metre cables are carried by four pillars across a 2,900-metre span, and the ride climbs 860 vertical metres in about seven minutes to an upper station at 1,274 metres. The Basecamp Café runs at the top station, and in peak season the Toppstugan hut on the summit serves light meals, including Swedish waffles. In summer, hikers ride up and walk the last stretch to the summit for a 360-degree view over the Jämtland mountains. In 2019 SkiStar announced plans to take the cable car down, so check the current lift list before you travel.
How rime ice coats mountain lifts
The thick, white crust on exposed mountain structures is usually rime. It forms when supercooled water droplets in fog or low cloud freeze the instant they strike a surface. Hard rime grows in freezing fog with moderate to strong winds at around −2 to −10 °C. It is dense and white, builds up on the windward side of objects and shows comb-like streaks pointing into the wind. Soft rime forms in calmer air and grows into fragile, feathery needles that shake off easily.
Ridges and summits in low cloud are perfect rime factories, which is why the same effect coats trees, masts and weather instruments on high ground. On Åreskutan’s summit the average daily maximum over a year is just 1.1 °C, and February is the coldest month.
Visiting Åre in winter
Åre is easy to reach without a car. Trains stop in the village, and Åre Östersund Airport lies about 100 km away, with buses linking the two. In the high season the resort runs night skiing from 6 to 8 pm on selected lifts. For more of Sweden in winter, see our Kolarbyn Eco Lodge: A Forest Stay Built Around Simple Routines. For a similar meeting of buildings and high mountain weather, explore the Sphinx Observatory. For frost on a forest instead of a lift, see Jan Bainar’s winter forest photographs.
Related reading
- Kolarbyn Eco Lodge: A Forest Stay Built Around Simple Routines
- Ice Music in Swedish Lapland: Instruments, Light and a Winter Hall
- ESCAPE’s Cabin-Like Park Model: Interior Layout and Small-Space Design
- Treehotel in Harads: Architecture, Rooms and a Northern Sweden Stay
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