A couple of weeks ago I measured Kebnekaise's two tops. For those of you who don't know (anyone not living in Sweden) Kebnekaise is Sweden's highest peak, in fact it comes in at number one and number two. There is one tiny detail worth mentioning here: the highest peak, "Sydtoppen" is only highest because it is capped by approximately 30m of ice. Without its cap "Nordtoppen" would be highest, and "Sydtoppen" would slip a long way down the list. "Sydtoppen" has been measured by professor Per Holmlund in the first week of August every year for many years now. He uses a good old Geodimeter 440 to measure the more than 3km to the top, one year he even had it serviced for the job.
A couple of years ago I measured it at the end of the ablation season using a Trimble GeoXH, accompanied by "Sveriges television". They managed to put together a long report on it for the main national news. I have not got a link for that. This year we made it on to Aftonbladet TV", so not the same punch, oh well. But the media interest for this is huge. Gunhild Rosqvist, my boss at "Tarfala Research Station", receives a never-ending stream of calls in the run up to this odd little job. Why?
This year I surveyed "Nordtoppen" to 2096.8 metres above sea level and "Sydtoppen" to 2097.5 metres above sea level (both in RH2000, using a Trimble R7 rover and base station). The difference is so small that their relationship could be reversed easily, given another high ablation year. So what's the problem? Well, the ridge between the two is no walk in the park and people are going to die when tourists start insisting on going to "Nordtoppen" instead of "Sydtoppen", so maybe that's why there is all this fuss. Maybe. Or maybe "Sydtoppen" losing another 70 cm of ice will be a symbol of climate disaster, doom and gloom that the collective Swedish psyche can cling to so that they may join in with the rest of the world in suffering.
