July 29, 2008...(Day 6)...Kvarntorp Mountain and Lake Vanern

400 Steps...Oh my...when will we reach the top of Kvarntorp Mountain? Today was a travel day to the west coast of Sweden. On the way we did a bit of sightseeing, and began with Kvarntorp Mountain, just a short distance from Odensbacken.

Amanda and Jonathan hiked up the steps to the mountaintop, while UllaBritt and I drove up in the air-conditioned car! Hmm...who was smarter? My excuse was that my head concussion was making me a bit dizzy, so I didn't think it wise to try to climb up all those steps. Thank you, UllaBritt, for planning interesting geological sightseeing tours for me.

View from atop Kvarntorp: We had a great view from atop the mountain. We could almost see Amanda's parents' town from here. This was an interesting visit to a place where oil extraction had occurred during World War II. It was a really hot day, the mountaintop smelled heavily of oil.

Warning...Hot Area: There was smoke rising up from the ground, and the smell of oil was almost overpowering. I found that I could not hang around there for very long as I am sensitive to chemical odors, and it just plain isn't safe to breathe those fumes for very long.

This mountain is still hot and the oil shale is still burning deep underground from early attempts at oil shale extraction, the whole goal of which was to create synthetic crude oil to be used as fuel oil. "One of the earliest in-situ processes was the underground gasification by electrical energy process exploited between 1940 and 1966 for the oil shale extraction at Kvarntorp, Sweden.[5] In this process, electric heaters were installed in bore holes and the gas pressure, generated by heating, pressed shale oil and gas vapors to flow through conduits to condensers. Gases were sucked out and treated in the treatment plant."  (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale_extraction)

Modern Sculpture atop Kvarntorp Mountain: There were several sculptures on top of this mountain of oil shale. It made the place seem a bit prettier than it was.