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.
- Back home, I have of course uploaded in OSM my own traces and created the ways accordingly) -
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.
