Our first day was a perfect day for tracking - bright blue skies,crisp snow on the ground and the temperature remaining below freezing all day. With all our warm gear on, and with amazing packed lunches in our back packs we headed out into the Swedish countryside.
Hunting is still prevalent in Sweden, it's licensed but there is an uneasy peace with people trying to understand each other's perspectives and live side by side. That said the pack Anders used to track, over several years, had been shot last year - well the male was and the female disappeared - needless to say he was quite sad and had tried hard to save them but his protests fell on deaf ears as he was deemed to have no locus - neither landowner nor hunter.
Consequently we headed to a new area where he had found some tracks and believed a new pairing was establishing their territory.
Our first tracks however were of the other main predator in the area - the lynx. Scouring the snow we also saw small rodent tracks - a good sign for the owls - fox tracks, moose ( the main wolf food - particularly the young ones) and large bird prints belonging to the capercaillie.
After a warm up with some of our packed flasks of soup - we put our snow shoes on and headed up a track following wolf prints for the alpha pair of the Olsen pack. A pack is small - parents and their pups not lots of pairs.
It was great trying to put ourselves in the wolves "paws" and interpret what they were doing. We had to turn back when the tracks went across the lake - we didn't trust the ice- but we picked them up on the other side where we also found pee and poo and importantly blood - which meant the female was in heat and all looked good for pups later in the year.
After exploring some ancient forest where we spotted their tracks we then followed their tracks through a frozen boggy area ( impossible when thawed) and had great unique landscape views as well as wolf track following.
As the sun started to set we had to make our way back to the van - enroute we sat while Anders made some amazing wolf howls to see if the wolves would reply - they didn't but it was difficult to think Anders call wasn't the real thing!
On the way back I got my snow shoe caught and fell flat on my face - a tad painful to my front but no damage just lots of laughs!
Back at the can we all piled in and headed back to the hotel; after our day in the fresh air there was lots of snoozing but we were replenished by a great dinner at the hotel - the food was always top notch.
( Today's photo is the group looking at and understanding the lynx tracks.)