Heading North

The Wilderness Guide School I’ve been doing for the last 10 months ended the last Friday. The last week was very hectic with last tests to be passed and farewells to be said to many new friends but it is now over and it’s time to reward myself with a hike and thus I’m sitting in a car and heading to North while writing this! (N is driving so this is completely safe. )

The plan is to drive to the village of Inari (well North of the Arctic circle), get a ride from a friend to West to the Southern edge of Muotkatunturit wilderness area and start hiking from there on Monday morning. We will be heading North-East walking through the wilderness area to the Inari-Karigasniemi road that we will cross at Sulaoja and walk for a while along the Kevo trail in the Kevo strict nature reserve and from there we will head North to Paistunturit wilderness area and continue West to finish the walk to the Kevo Research Station near Inari-Utsjoki road. All together this makes some 200-250 km of walking (depending a lot on final route choices) and we have about 12 days to spend for it.

A sketch of the planned route (the red line).

It should be a splendid walk as the wilderness area are very wild in sense that there are no roads or marked trails nor too many huts. The terrain will be mostly nice gently rolling hills with valleys growing dwarf birch and occasional pine trees. Rivers are mostly small and easy to fjord but the water level is high as it’s very early summer in the North. Our biggest problem might be swamp areas that will definitely be wet and hard to negotiate but we plan to avoid them and take high routes when ever possible.

We did most of the trip preparations two weeks ago packing food, planning the route and updating old gear lists to fit the trip. We decided not to have a resupply on the Inari-Karigasniemi road so we will be carrying all the food and equipment for the 12 days right from the beginning. This is more in line with the kind of trips I like and I’d prefer spending the whole time in wild, untouched nature but I’ll tolerate one quick road crossing…

12 days food for two people is quite a big pile as the photo above shows. The photo is taken during preparations some things are still unpacked (there is a lot of superfluous packaging material as you can see from the photo below) and for example the bananas are not dried yet. I ended up taking a bit under 900 grams of food per day meaning about 3500 kcal while N is having a lot less, maybe around 700 grams a day. The food is not the lightest possible variety as we wanted to have some treats and didn’t have too much time to dry food but the figure is still acceptable for me. I’ll write more about the food  preparations and planning later.

I have also some new gear with me on this trip. Some of the most interesting ones include the Hyperlite Mountain Gear Expedition backpack (in the photo below), Hilleberg Anjan 3 tent (see the post of my first impression) and Montane Speedlite jacket. (Yeah, I finally bought a windshirt and I’m starting to like it already!) These are new pieces of kit that I haven’t yet tested thoroughly but I trust them already after some initial testing. More about them also coming later when they have seen decent amount of use. The rest of the kit is mostly tried and true stuff like Rab Momentum jacket, La Sportiva Wildcat trail runners, Ortlieb Aquazoom camera bag, Canon EOS 550D with EF 24-105 4 L IS lens and so on.

I haven’t weighted all the gear but the rucksack seems to be weighting about 19 kg in the beginning of the trip. It’s not especially light and far from ultralight but there is about 2 kg of camera gear, heavyish synthetic sleeping bag and I decided to take a little tarp (Tyvek version of the Terra Rose Gear Wandering Tarp) in addition to the tent as there is a possibility to make fires on the wilderness areas and it would be nice to have some shelter from rain while sitting by a fire…

Hopefully this little flu bugging me now will ease by tomorrow, the weather will be favourable and mosquitoes will stay at bay so I’ll have a good trip to report at the end of the Month. Until then the blog will probably be quiet but I might write a tweet or two along the way so if you want to follow the trip, follow @Korpijaakko on Twitter!

Free food for all!

About a year ago I wrote about Spruce tips and my dreams living of the land. During the last year many things have changed and evolved but I’m still dreaming of partially living of the land in the future and because of that I have been doing some experiments with resources freely available from the backyard. Nothing fancy or special here, no “real” primitive living or true self-sufficiency but some simple things that everyone should try. So here’s something that will hopefully inspire you!

Spring is the ultimate time for enjoying the nature greens or wild greens, or what ever you like to call them. There is an abundance of edible plants out there and usually they are at their very best in the early spring. So, depending on the latitude you are living in, it might be already a bit late but many things are also usable through the whole summer. (And in the autumn there are berries and mushrooms to eat and preserve.) And of course there is a lot of local variation: in some places the snow melts slower and later, some places are more shadowed, some warmer and sunnier. For gathering edible wild greens shady spots away from roads, fields and other human impact are usually the best.

I was planning to do a speed hike on the 133km Karhunpolku trail (mentioned earlier) during last week but as it got cancelled, I spent some of the time gathering and eating some wild greens. The Internet is a great resource for someone interested in the wild greens and I’m no expert on the topic, so instead of thorough advice and a lengthy post, I’ll just share some things I’ve been trying lately. inspired give it a try!

Spruce tips

I wrote about spruce tips already the last year and there’s plenty of good information in my post (updated this spring). The young light green coloured shoots of  spruce can be used as such for making salad or baking. they make great tea or you can make delicious syrup of them. Remember that gathering spruce tips is not every man’s right in Finland and you need the land owners permission!

Stinging nettle

This green plant can be a real pain but also a real delicacy. Gather young plants (around 10cm long) and top parts and leaves of older plants. I recommend using gloves while gathering. Again shady spots away from human impact are the best. You can either irrigate them in cold water changing the water several times or quickly boil them in slightly salted water. I did the latter. After this you can chop them up and dry (easier to do before chopping them up) or freeze them for future use. Or use immediately just like spinach. The nice thing about stinging nettle is that it’s easy to gather and the nutritional value is actually quite good so it can provide a real addition to the diet.

I used the boiled and chopped stinging nettle for soup,crepes and a pie with feta. Basically it’s just like using spinach. I made the soup with the following recipe:

- 50 g of butter (melt in a pot)
- 4 tbs of flour (add to the butter and stir for a while)
- 8 dl of milk (add, stir well and let it boil for few minutes until the flour is cooked and it’s nice and thick)
- 2 dl of cream (optional but makes it a lot better)
- 2+ dl of boiled and chopped stinging nettle (simmer for few more minutes)
- season with salt, black pepper and nutmeg
- serve with eggs or cheese and good bread

It’s easy to make a sauce with the same recipe: just use less milk (or more flour and butter) and you have a nice thick sauce to go with local fish and potatoes for example.

Common wood sorrel

The common wood sorrel is very common in the area where I live and it’s easy to gather, especially in shady spruce forests where there is not much undergrowth. I’ve been snacking it since I was a little kid. There’s a nice salty taste in it and it makes great salad. For example chop up some cherry tomatoes, couple of handfuls of wood sorrel, mix them and season with good olive oil, salt and black pepper. Cheese is a nice addition to this salad (I used parmesan flakes). Serve with good bread and wine.

Bilberry

Everyone is probably familiar with the bilberry (also know as European blueberry) berries but also the young leaves and flowers can be used as food. The flowers have subtle sweet taste and are actually really good but really troublesome to pick. I gathered some to make tea wich was really good (subtle sweet taste as I just said) but I don’t think it worth the trouble unless you are just trying out things. Young light green coloured leaves can be fermented to make tea or used as salad but I prefer the taste of the common wood sorrel. And of course the berries are the best but it will still take few months to get fresh bilberries.

Fireweed

Blossoming fireweed (aka Rosebay Willowherb) is beautiful sight but before it reaches that state it can be used as a food. The young leaves can be used as salad or fermented to make tea but the whole young sooth can be used just like asparagus: gather about 10-15 cm long young plants (easiest and best to collect from area with sandy soil), peel the outer layer off and use as asparagus: fry with some butter, cook in salted water or cook with steam. I cooked some in water and served them seasoned with molten butter, salt and black pepper. Makes a great side dish for a nice steak!

Sorry, no picture of the fireweed side dish but here is a picture of stinging nettle pie with feta cheese to inspire you! And there are many, many more wild greens to use than the few I mentioned here!

Have you been using wild greens? Please, share your experiences, tips and favourite recipes and leave a comment!