A Tragic Winter in the Anaris Mountains
A harrowing memory still lingers for John-Erik Olofsson, a mountain rescuer who now stands at 88 years old. He recalls a scene that has never left him: “A horrible sight greeted us, with frozen dead bodies.” This was the aftermath of a doomed rescue mission that took place nearly 50 years ago.
In February 1978, Olofsson received an urgent call from fishermen about a terrifying incident in the Anaris mountains of Jämtland. The peaks on Sweden’s border with Norway had recently been hit by a freak storm, bringing hurricane-like winds and temperatures plummeting below minus 20 degrees Celsius. He knew that anyone caught in such conditions had little chance of survival. But nothing could have prepared him for what he would find.
On February 23, two groups of cross-country skiers set off from the Lunndörren mountain lodge into the snowy wilderness. One group included Eva Eriksson, Carina Axelsson, both 17, and Christer Almqvist, Urban Falk, Sven-Gunnar Svahnström, and Curt Hermansson, aged between 22 and 37. All six were part of a local sobriety group from Vaxjo in southern Sweden, embarking on their trip with excitement and anticipation.
At the lodge, they met three men from Lunndörrsstugan. The next morning, the two groups said goodbye and ventured into the snow. Little did they know they would soon be reunited in the most tragic of circumstances.
Initially, the day seemed promising. It was clear and bright with light wind, perfect for cross-country skiing. The group from Vaxjo glided through the mountains, taking breaks and enjoying the wintery landscape. However, by afternoon, snowdrifts began to form as a violent storm brewed nearby.
Snow started swirling, and ferocious winds roared at 25 miles per hour, making it difficult for them to stand upright. Within moments, the skiers were fighting for their lives. They managed to reach a small hollow, where they tried to set up a windsack for shelter. But the storm was too fierce, and visibility too poor, preventing them from getting inside.
Desperate for shelter, they dug a snow pit in a ravine and set up a bivouac, huddling together to stay warm. As the brutal cold gnawed at their cheeks and ears, frostbite began to set in. Radio calls for help failed, and there was nothing left for them to do other than wait.
Then, the three men from Lunndörrsstugan, whom they had met the night before, emerged from the snow.
Seven of them managed to squeeze into a tent, but the other two had to shelter outside in a windsack. The blizzard raged through the night. Then, the tent’s roof was torn away by the wind. The storm continued into the next day, and only on the third morning, on February 25, did the winds finally die down.
But by then, most of the group were dead, buried beneath the snow. Miraculously, 22-year-old Christer Almqvist was still alive. With bleeding, frozen hands, he clawed through the snow and managed to dig out two people who still showed signs of life. Somehow, he staggered back to Lunndörrsstugan, where he encountered some fishermen, Kjell-Urban Näs and Lars-Erik Forsbergh, who rushed to help him.
Talking confusedly and pointing with his bloody fingers towards a trail, he tried to tell them he needed help, but before he could finish his sentence, he collapsed into their arms.
Snowmobiles and a helicopter were dispatched to the mountains. Rescuers Mr Olofsson and Hans Ottendahl were among the crew who joined the mission, while the fishermen volunteered too. Once they got to the site, they found a blown-up bivouac. Inside, people sat frozen in various positions. A little further away, a man was lying face down in the snow.
“A terrible sight. It looked as if a grenade had hit. The eight were lying in heaps in the pit, more or less buried in the snow,” fisherman Mr Näs said. Two people showed signs of life and were immediately airlifted to the hospital, but both were pronounced dead mid-flight.
“The other six were dead. We didn’t find one of them at first. He was almost buried under the snow that had fallen from the side of the bivouac,” the fisherman added. At the site, rescuers also found unused equipment – unpacked backpacks with sleeping bags and thermoses.
Speaking to Swedish newspaper Östersunds-Posten shortly after his rescue, Mr Almqvist described how he and his peers frantically tried to call for help using their emergency radios, but to no avail. He said the snow blew the tent they tried to set up, and that there was no room for everyone inside.
“I lay outside until midnight. I couldn’t fit in there. I walked around. In the end, it was almost only me who could move,” he said. Once the storm subsided, he said he mustered all his strength to find his way to the closest village to ask for help.
“I was convinced that two were alive. They were moaning and moving. I was terribly thirsty and hungry, and was going extremely slowly.”
Mountain rescuers had to load the six dead bodies onto sledges to transport them down the mountain. Mr Oloffson said: “We tied them down, stiff as sticks. [We tried] to do it nicely and respectfully, and we put blankets over them. Then I remember we sat down and had a coffee for a while before we went down. I think it was very useful to take a moment to talk through everything. We talked a lot about what had really happened to them in the mountains.”
The bivouac was destroyed, and the backpacks were all around, completely untouched. It surprised us a lot, he said.
Mr Almqvist said he was forced out of the bivouac after the three men they had met in Lunndörrsstugan joined. “It became too crowded… It was impossible for nine people to fit.” The young man stayed outside and took shelter behind a boulder, moving the whole time to keep warm.
He said everyone survived the first night, but on the second day, the skiers began to die, one by one. As snow covered their weakened bodies, Mr Almqvist said he frantically tried to dig his friends out, in the hope of keeping them alive. But two of his peers could not take the agony any longer, and went out into the snowdrift and lay down on the icy ground and waited to die. By nightfall, only four of them were alive.
It was not until the following morning that Mr Almqvist was able to find help. Despite his account, the tragedy has largely remained a mystery, with investigators questioning why the group of cross-country skiers didn’t use their equipment.
Börje Rehnström, a doctor at Östersund Hospital, where Mr Almqvist was treated, believes that the storm “simply came as a shock to them” and the sudden drop in temperatures to which they were exposed prevented them from thinking rationally.
“Despite the fact that the six-man group was very well equipped and had planned their route carefully, this did not help when the wind threw itself at them,” a police report said.
Mr Almqvist is believed to have survived because he never stopped moving to keep himself warm. But his life still greatly suffered after he was eventually forced to have parts of his hands and feet amputated due to frostbite, and was unable to return to his job at a local post office for three years.
Local media reported that his mental well-being also suffered massively after the incident, and he chose to live a quiet life, declining to give any further interviews to the press.
His peers, who died frozen in the snow, are remembered on a mountain in Gröndalen, where there is a silver-grey wooden cross with the engraved words: “In memory of the eight who died from the storm and cold on 24 February 1978.”
