Hiking in Lapland is different from hiking in Wales. In Wales you probably want to just stare at a map and design a route from all the possible paths. Lapland doesn’t have the population density for that. There are very few paths! So you are probably best off finding a signposted route. If there is a path, it’s probably because there is something so special somebody made such a route. There aren’t many around.
We relied on these established routes. The second day we chose one in a nearby canyon; not sure what is was called but is was just a bit SE of our lake. That was beautiful! We did a loop and extended it a bit on one side. We even saw the remains of another log chute in the river. This clearly had been logging terrain for a while!
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| A waterfall and some snow on the canyon wall |
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| The landscape above the canyon |
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| Some badly maintained infrastructure |
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| The landscape in the canyon |
The mosquitoes here were quite bad. We sprayed liberally with insect repellent, but it was still a bad idea to stand still. As long as you keep walking it was ok. Luckily we found a picnic table at the top of the gorge where there was such a breeze the mosquitoes mainly stayed away. And we also had the murder machine with us. So we had lunch in comfort.
I had also brought a good bara brith and birthday candles. It was already three days after my sister’s birthday, but this was the earliest suitable opportunity to bring them out. It was festive!
After our walk we did what would be routine: we went back, I went for a run and a swim, and then we had dinner. Another successful day!
The next day we wanted to go to a nearby national park, and find a route there. And we found a circular one by a ski centre: Iso Syรถte. We figured the bit by the ski centre would probably be ugly, but we had high hopes for the rest. Unfortunately we hadn’t noticed on the map that this route was also indicated as a cycling route. So it was very paved! And busy by Finnish standards. For neither of us, this was the favourite day. But one learns. And we were home so late I skipped my run. But the swim was good…
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| Making lunch the Finnish way |
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| The path was a bit over-engineered to our liking |
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| Some swampy terrain |
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| Hike selfie |
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| Here the path was inoffensive |
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| A cabin along the way where we (read: I) could briefly hide from the mosquitoes |
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