Weather was extremely hot for a beginning of spring, resulting in an unbearable amount of mosquitoes. Appart from mosquitoes, I ended up suffering from mycosis on my feet. I decided not to push it until Tampere but rather stop 35km far from Ylöjärvi, the end point.
It was a good hike anyway.
Altough the trail is relatively well marked, the path is quite often invisible and results in navigation difficulties. Some parts of the trail are complete bushwhacking. Not super easy but rather restless.
I still managed to complete an average 37km/day for the 5 days I was on the trail.
I saw a lot of wildlife during these 5 days, (including an adder, a deer, a beaver, a badger and an elk). I think the animals were a bit confused by the sudden rush of Spring and I often surprised them from very close (which was sometimes very scary).
Here is a list of online topographic maps which I happened to find interesting for planning some hiking routes but they might also be useful for other outdoors purposes:
Last weekend, I was participating to the Snowshoe trekking Finnish championhip in Pudasjärvi, Lapland. I was with 2 very good friends who I met in Oulu a few years ago. We were at that time exchange students at the University of Oulu.
Adam from Hungary (with the red jacket) and Petr from Czech R.(in black).
It was the second participation for Petr and me. However, Adam participated for his first time.
As in 2007, our team name was "the Frozen Foreigners" :)
The Pudasjärvi snowshoe race is a 2-day race. The first day consists of a approximate 15km-hike, where you need to gather as much points as you could (which mean extra-time for the second day) performing diverse activities, located at each compulsory checkpoints you need to find. After this usually tough first day, a night out in the Finnish Lapland winter is awaiting! The second day, -if you were able to make it :-) -, a race takes place, in which you need to reach the final point as fast as you could, powering in deep snow. This year, the race was 7km long, on a quite flat and never-ending ground.
Not everything went as planned during this weekend. We had a few minor problems: adam having blisters and knee pain, Petr falling into a river and me falling into a not so frozen lake (Despite the -15°C and being in the depth of the winter, ice was surprisingly quite unstable). We therefore only finished 4th, among the 5 teams in the game, well-behind the 3 first teams. But I hope that one day, we'll be able to perform a bit better and rank among the first teams.
Despite the tough moments, the whole weekend was good fun and a very good experience. And I have no regrets about it.
We were given GPS trackers for the 2 days comp'. Here are the links of the records of our race (complete team name was Frozen Foreigners 2010):
Funny stuff is that you see our team icone going backwards during the race (at the last strech of the race). Petr, who was carrying the device while powering ahead, went too far ahead of me and Adam, and had to come back on his tracks to find us making a burnt-out break... Who on hell is going "backward" in a race?!!! :)
I haven't published any article here for quite some time now, so I thought I ought to do it now.
I have been spending my christmas holidays up in the North of the country, with a few of my old-time friends. We have rented a cottage in Raattama, near muonio (Pallas tunturi area).
I have not been able to find a good topographic map of Finland based on OSM. Moreover, there is very little records of OSM activity up there. I am therefore using Google maps to show you the place. :-(
It was nice to spend a few days up there in Lapland and I took the opportunity (despite the "not-so-good" weather) to go for a couple of day-trips with skis. I met Jarkko and Anna, a very friendly couple from Oulu. We shared nice talks along with a nice tour.
Anna & Jarkko. The picture was taken with my phone (forgot the camera at the cottage!). That explains the very crappy resolution!
These holidays were also a good opportunity to use my GPS on the field. A good surprise came from the fact that the Pallas-Hettä trail was already uploaded in the OSM database, which I haven't noticed before actually being there. Indeed, I had the OSM map of Finland for Garmin (a gmapsupp.img file) uploaded in my GPS device, which allowed me to find the Nammalakuru cabin very easily, despite the very thick whiteout.
It was a very good surprise indeed, because as you can see in the videos, the weather was crap and orienteering wasn't an easy task. Big thanks to the guy who uploaded the Pallas-Hettä trail and cabins into OSM!
After my friends would return home, I was supposed to stay for an additional week for a solo hike somewhere in Lapland. But like most of my friends, I fell sick (try to live for a week in a cabin with 12 sick friends!). So I eventually decided to go back to Rauma to recover from the flue. But I hope to return to Lapland soon to ski along the Pallas-Hettä trail. The place is absolutely awesome in winter!
For now, I am back in old Rauma. I decided to reinstall Linux (Ubuntu 9.10) on my computer, wanting to give it a second try after an unsuccessful attemp with 8.10 last year . I have been trying to figure out how things work on this new OS, especially concerning the managment of GPS data, and I have know spent a few solid hours on the wikis and forums of Ubuntu. I will certainly post a few articles here which might interest you if you're starting as well.
