Monthly highlights of August

“Monthly highlights” is a series of post concentrating on a 10-month wilderness guide course I am taking this year at Niittylahden opisto near Joensuu in Eastern Finland. These posts try to summarize the best parts of each month and are naturally published at the end of each month. This is the first post of  the series. Hopefully you enjoy it!

Highlights of August: a saimaa ringed seal, first aid courses and the best tent-sauna ever!

Even though the line above tries to sum up the individual highlights of the past month, the most interesting thing has been a more abstract experience of getting to know the people on my class and getting used to the life at the school. I will write more about the life at the school later on when I don’t have other highlights to share with you.

Canoeing at Kolovesi National Park

When the school started a bit over four weeks ago we went straight into business and headed to the Kolovesi National Park for a five days canoeing trip. The trip itself was really relaxed with not much daily mileage but a lot of time together sitting by a fire, doing different tasks and getting to know each others. With the great weather we had it was very nice trip even though I would have liked some more canoeing.  As there were only few bugs and the views were awesome it was great to sleep under the stars without a bivy or a tarp. Because of the views I slept the second night next to a rock cliff and it was pretty cold place to sleep without the shelter of forest. Still, that night was one the greatest nights outside I’ve had this summer.

Maybe the nicest place I've slept in this summer.

The second highlight of the trip took place on the last evening when we were at Kirkkoranta making food and packing gear to the car. I think it was our teacher Pasi who spotted a saimaa ringed seal swimming next to the opposite shore a few hundred meters away. Saimaa ringed seal is very rare and endangered species – only some 270 individuals exist. The seal surfaced three times swimming back and forth probably looking for some fish to eat (or lurking to steal our coffee and pancakes?) I have never seen one before, and neither had our teacher Pasi even though he has spent some time especially looking for the seals… Lucky us!

The Saimaa ringed seal swimming to left. Use your imagination if necessary.

The second week we spent at the school, mostly sitting in the class but also going occasionally outside for some orienteering or to learn nature lore as we are required to identify a lot of plants, birds, bugs and stuff to become wilderness guides. But there was not much interesting happening during the second week or at least not interesting enough for me to remember now when writing this… But on the third week we had two pretty nice first aid courses each lasting for two full days. The contents of the courses were based on the first aid 1 and 2 courses of the Finnish Red Cross but were modified for outdoor situations and had quite a lot of additional content. I got a lot of useful information from the courses and learnt to do few things also in practise. The teachers were also really good and thus the course gets a place in the highlights of the month. I can’t wait for the WAFA course in November!

Yours truly in a splinted stage of being.

And during the last week we got back into the woods! This time we headed to the Southern end of the Karhunpolku trail near the Patvinsuo National Park where we exercised basic wilderness skills like camping with Erätoveri tarps (relatively light traditional 3m x 3m PU coated tarp) and cooking on open fire. This wasn’t especially new for me but it’s always good to spent time outside under a tarp. We didn’t hike too much during the trip but instead did some fishing, orienteering exercises with 1:50000 maps during the day and night and  learnt many things about the surrounding nature thanks to our visiting teacher/guide Harri. He was a superb guy with very profound knowledge about the North Karelian nature.

I didn't bother taking of my trail runners for this.

Cooking: grilled sausage, eggs in moss and mushrooms with some onion. Delicious!

But the best thing, at least for me, was tent sauna. We took with us a big box-shaped tent cloth that can be used as a sauna using an improvised stove. We made the stove from a big pile of rocks and some steel grating we found near the beach. Then we spent about five hours warming up the stones and ended up with a big pile of red glowing stones (see the picture, most of the red glowe is not from the fire but from the stones themselves). After that we shoveled away the embers, poured some water on the stone pile to put out the last of the flames and then pulled the tent cloth over corner poles to cover the stove and benches made of a big fallen log. And the sauna was ready! It was a great sauna, definitely making it to the Top 3 sauna experiences I’ve ever had. The only problem was that we had to cut it short as we had some more night orienteering to do that evening…

Straight from the deepest pits of Mount Doom: Improvised stove for sauna.

Enjoying the work done.

This week we’ve had a lot of time in the classroom and also some orienteering. The next week we’ll have some more sitting in the classroom, some more orienteering and our first exams in nature lore. We might also be going for a long walk but if we go, I’ll write a separate post about it. After that we will have the basic course in white water paddling at Ruunaa and the week after that we will head to Lapland for a six-day autumn hike. We have a challenge of getting the total pack weight below 15 kilo for the trip. That one should be relatively easy. even if I’d had to borrow a heavier sleeping bag for the trip.

Two Erätoveri tarps and a fire. A good place to be.

Excuses, explanations and lifestyle changes

It’s been a while since the last post. A bit too long time to be honest but as I’ve tweeted, some things have kept me occupied. This post is about those things.

The main reason for the radio silence...

As most of you know, about three weeks ago I started a one-year-program to become a qualified wilderness guide. In addition I’m trying to finish my master’s thesis and retain some sort of social life outside the school. The school has been way more intense than I first thought. This is partly because of the school and teaching itself but mostly because of my cool classmates and quite a change in lifestyle.

The school started with a five-day canoeing trip to Kolovesi national park.

My bivy spot near to an edge of a high cliff at Kolovesi. Great views!

Evenings were spent sitting and cooking by the fire.

Taking a shortcut.

We saw a very rare Saimaa ringed seal during the last evening! Only about 260 individuals excist. In the picture the seal is diving.

A few months ago I still had a nice job at the university and it kept my ass in front of a keyboard about eight hours a day. The way from home to university was only a short walk and thus I had a good amount of time to spent in front of a keyboard also when at home. Of course I did some hiking trips, occasional weekenders, some overnighters, 3-5 runs or long walks a week etc. But still I had quite a lot of time to spent surfing the web and writing things for my blog.

This has changed.

As the school is about 230km from my home, there is no point to commute the distance daily, so at school days I live at the school dorm. A partial reason for the previous radio silence was that for the first two weeks we didn’t have user accounts for school’s computers and I didn’t have a web subscription for my own laptop. But now that I have an access to school’s computers, I don’t still spent much time sitting on my ass.

A normal day at the school starts when I wake up at 06:45 (instead of something past 10 am), I go for a morning run and swim (instead of hot shower), eat breakfast at the school cafeteria (instead of doing that at home while reading a newspaper) and after that I start my school day (instead of a day at the office). For example yesterday we had first aid training. Yes, occasionally we have school also during the weekends.

Yours truly in a truly splinted state during the first aid training.

After lunch followed with more lessons or training and a dinner I might take a short nap or something and then it’s time for some extra physical excercise (instead of sitting in front of a computer) with my cool classmates. We might go for a run, do weight training at the gym or maybe go kayaking like we did on Friday as the weather was so great.

A kayaking trip at Pyhäselkä. The weather is tolerable.

Classmates.

At the evening there is some good time to learn to identify all the plants, bugs, mushrooms, birds, etc. that are required for the degree (instead of surfing the web). Then I try to get some seven hours of sleep or so and the thing starts all over the next morning.

It seems that the major difference to my previous lifestyle is the lack of down time, relaxed sitting by the computer or with a newspaper. Instead for the most of the day I’m doing something and often it’s something quite physical. Naturally all the exercise isn’t necessary (though e.g. we have quite a lot of orienteering in our schedule) but I like it. Despite the fact most of the muscles in my body hurt at the moment (thus I had a resting day today and time to write this blog post), I like it.

During the weekends I’ve been busy with social life or other outdoor-related activities. For example a week ago I attended to military reserves marching and skill competition called Jukajärven jotos. We walked about 45km during the weekend and me and my mates managed well enough to win the competition (there were 10 patrols attending). But once again, during that weekend I found myself too busy to write the blog. Despite the fact that I like my lifestyle, be it demanding and intense, I try to keep the blog running.

During the march we found a piece of road missing...

The morning of the second marching day saw us on the second place...

... but in the end we were victorious!

In the future I’m planning to write at least one post a week as I did before and maybe two on good weeks, except if I’ll spent the whole week in the bush off the grid (like we will be doing next week). Every month I’ll write a post  called “Monthly highlights” that will mostly concentrate on guide school related things highlighting the best parts of the past month. In addition I try to finish the missing trip reports from the summer and when the winter closes in after a month or two, I’ll publish the rest of my Svalbard skiing expedition (the Ultima Thule 2011 expedition) related posts.

For example a "lessons learned" post about winter expedition gear is coming up later on...

I’m also putting up a new collective blog for our wilderness guide course (I’ll be editing the blog but everyone will be creating content equally) but as the teaching is (mostly) in Finnish and aimed for Finnish speaking students, the blog will also be (at least mostly) in Finnish. The blog will be published next week, so more to come soon…

Trip report? Not quite.

Sorry folks but the trip report from the packrafting trip is still under construction as I have been busy with things like life and will be starting my wilderness guide school in about 8 hours…

Instead of a real trip report, here is a bunch of pictures from the second trip. The trip included hiking from the western shore of Kilpisjärvi around the big fell massive, thru the valley of Isdalen, back to the eastern side of the massive, packrafting part most of the Kummaeno river back towards the Finnish border and then some work along a dirt road back to the main road and hitch hiking back to the village of Kilpisjärvi. It was a six day trip done with my long time girlfriend and one Alpacka Denali Llama packraft.

The trip also included sleeping about 16 hours for the first night, over 12 hours on the following and about 12 hours on the third night. Maybe I was a bit tired after the previous trip? There was also few hours when we got lost of each others and it was quite scary but ended well.

The packraft was a tight fit but it’s possible. Though I wouldn’t recommend it as a primary way of travel if decent hiking or two packrafts would be an option. But for difficult river crossing, long calm water crossing or floating a river on a difficult terrain it’s a nice lightweight option for two. Rocky rapids simply don’t work with the load and skills we had.

So, here are some pictures. Hope you enjoy them!

We took a boat trip across Kilpisjärvi instead of walking through the Malla nature reserve.

Way to get lost right in the beginning.

In the start we passed the point where the borders of Finland, Sweden and Norway meet.

The views while walking towards the Gappohytta. We didn't stay in the huts but the trails pass be them.

Having a break. The views back towards the Finnish side.

Crossing this was harder in April 2010 with skis and pulka...

The lower slopes of the Barras fell and Stordalen behind it.

We had our share of angry Long-tailed skuas trying to take our scalps.

Cloudy morning after a good 16 hours of sleep. Apparently I was tired...

The morning views through the clouds.

This is where we were coming from...

...and this is where we were heading: Mordor. No, I mean the valley of Isdalen.

Quite a scary camp site we found in Isdalen. According to the "best before" dates in the food packages the remains of the camp are from around year 1997. That's what you get if you use runners. I got an inflamed achilles tendon.

The tongue of the glacier on the Isdalsfjella.

The Southern wall of Moskkugaisi fell.

Walking out from the Isdalen. Last moment without the bugs. At 1000 meters with patches of snow and decent wind.

We saw several rainbows as we had some rain on every day except the last day.

Views to Rostadalen in the West.

Big sky country. Moskanjavri.

After Isdalen we had quite enough of bugs. That would be the "ambient bug intensity". Luckily not all of them were on the mood for some blood. The worst bugs were later on a camp near the Kummaeno river.

Juoksavatnjunni.

Pältsan.

The waterfall in Bealcanjohka near the Pältsastugan hut.

Notice something weird? The bronze lady in the lower right corner weights about 35kg and the artist carried her there for 24 kilometers. Not quite UL style to travel?

I made a fire to fend of the bugs and it started to rain heavily just when I had got it finished... Made from one dead and very wet birch with the little knife and few matches.

I don't have too much packrafting pictures from this trip. One of the long calm sections of the Kummaeno river.

And one of the very rocky rapids between the calm parts. The rocky rapids require swift and precise maneuvering which is impossible with my skills and a big load.

The apparently abandoned farm at Kummavuopio.

The final march along the dirt road from Kummaeno. Not what we had originally planned but felt like a good solution.

The evening skies were magnificent!

The "Good Morning Cafe" at the bridge offered a nice breakfast of hard bread with salami, poptarts, coffee and fresh water. (Unfortunately they had runned out of fresh apples the previous morning...) And all this with a gentle breeze to keep the bugs away!

The hitchhiking was hopeless! But luckily we talked a ride from a nice Finnish guy after he had driven first some 15km to Kilpisjärvi and then came back to get us! Thanks!

The trip report will be online next weekend after my first week in the school. I may send an update or two from the school and those will be via Twitter as we will spent the week on a river canooing. Or at least I think so…