About Hallingsafallet
Hallingsafallet (or more accurately Hällingsåfallet) was a spectacularly gushing waterfall where the Lilla Hällingsån dropped 43m right into the head of a deep canyon.
After having seen some modest waterfalls in Sweden up to this point on our 2019 trip to Scandinavia, this waterfall was the first one to really wow us.
Sure it had the volume and the dimensions to make it legitimate, but we thought it was its location at the head of the canyon that really made Hällingsåfallet stand out.
The canyon itself was said to be 15-60m wide and 800m long, which was also said to be the longest “living” one in Sweden (i.e. it still has water running through it).
Apparently, canyons like this weren’t common in Sweden, especially since it wasn’t necessarily formed by its watercourse but by a pre-existing crack eroded further by ice in the last Ice Age.
In fact, the Hallingsafallet Nature Reserve (Hällingsåfallet Naturreservat) was gazetted primarily for this waterfall and canyon.
Trivia aside, we experienced the falls from a variety of lookouts offering us the ability to have a look from various angles.
This included its brink where we witnessed a nice bold arcing morning rainbow in its wafting mist.
It was also quite a family-friendly excursion since the walk was pretty much all flat.
Also, all the overlooks had railings so we weren’t stressed out about our daughter getting too close to the edge.
We easily could have extended our visit by not only lingering at each of the overlooks, but we also could have chosen to walk a longer trail along the canyon instead of the short 800m walk we ended up doing (covering all overlooks).
However, the mosquitos were quite bad here during our mid-July 2019 visit (as they had been for every waterfall we had visited in Sweden so far).
So we pretty much had our fill of Hällingsåfallet and made it back to the car park (see directions below) in about 45 minutes.
Authorities
Hällingsåfallet was near the town and municipality of Strömsund, which belonged to the county of Jämtland, Sweden. For information or inquiries about the area as well as current conditions, you may want to try the local municipality website.
We visited Hällingsåfallet after driving from Grong, Norway and arriving in Strömsund. I’ll describe the driving route from both spots.
Driving from Grong to Hällingsåfallet
From Grong, we basically went south on the E6 for about 9km before turning left onto the Fv74. We then drove east on the Fv74 for about 98km before turning right onto a signed access road.
The turnoff was about 2km east of the Norwegian-Swedish border where the Fv74 became the Route 342.
Then, we drove south on the access road which pretty much became unsealed almost immediately.
At about 17km from the Route 342 turnoff, we reached a junction, where the signs told us to keep right to continue towards Hällingsåfallet.
We ultimately took this road to the main car park in almost another 4km.
Overall, this drive took us a little over 90 minutes (not counting road construction delays).
Driving from Strömsund to Hällingsåfallet
Going in the other direction from Strömsund, we would drive north on the Route 342, which would eventually veer west and follow the north shore of Torsfjärden.
After about 90km, our GPS told us to turn left, cross the dam over Bågedeforsen, then continue on the narrow unpaved road for just under 25km before reaching a signed turnoff to go left.
That would put us on the familiar last 4km to the main car park for Hällingsåfallet.
While the GPS advocated the shorter (but not necessarily faster) road, we also could have driven another 45km on the Route 342 before turning left onto the same turnoff mentioned above in the directions from Grong.
My guess would be that both routes would consume the same amount of time. It’s just whether the potholes and scooting by (or being stuck behind) RVs sharing the unpaved road would be worth the “shortcut”.
This drive also took us around 90 minutes, but half of that time was spent on the unsealed road.
For geographic context, Strömsund was about 101km (about 90 minutes drive) north of Östersund, 245km (3 hours drive) east of Grong, Norway, and 344km (about 4.5 hours drive) east of Trondheim, Norway.
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