New packrafting toys!

No, unfortunately I don’t have any new packrafting toys for myself but there have been few very cool new products hitting the market this summer. And even though I’ve tweeted about every one of the new toys they are also worth a blog post as I have readers who don’t follow me on Twitter. (For those readers: It’s an option worth considering just go here and click “Follow”.) A lot of this information is originally from packrafting.de, a great blog worth following!

To get you started here a few pics from the recent trips near Kilpisjärvi, both including a bit of packrafting. Both trips were possible thanks to the packraft rental service by Backpacking North.

My mate Tuomas packrafting the Kummaeno river. A lot of walking followed by easy river with low water level: a trip where a light but sturdy packraft would have excelled.

N floating down the gorgeous Reisadalen after a lot of walking. Again a lighter packraft, or a raft for two, would’ve done the trick here.

Dry suits, designed solely for packrafting!

Dry suit just makes packrafting a lot more comfortable if it’s cold, the water is cold or you’re doing hard stuff in white water. For most use you don’t really need one but might occasionally still want one. We didn’t have dry suits on the aforementioned trips but I did miss mine on the Kummaeno. I have been using an Ursuit AWS 4-tex suit made by a Finnish company Ursuk. They make great dry suits, especially for demanding professional use, and the AWS 4-tex is also a very good dry suit for the use it was designed for. But it has socks and they tend to wear out and start to leak in packrafting use (which includes walking with the suit, often sand, sticks and squirrels in your shoes). And  for the trips where you have to carry your rafting kit over long distances, a lighter option would be nicer…

Tuomas on Lätäseno back in 2011. One of those moments when you really appreciate a quality dry suit.

And da-daa! Now there are two dry suits designed solely for packrafting.

They are both very simple and light weight and instead of socks (or fixed boots) they have gussets in the ankles. The long-awaited dry suit from Alpacka, the Stowaway, hit the shelves this summer and a bit later the European Packrafting-Store launched their own Anfibio line including a dry suit called the Packsuit. I have to say that on the screen the Alpacka Stowaway is more appealing thanks to the zipper on waist (for the need that naturally occur during a long day of packrafting) and a neoprene neck closure (suits better for my skin). But the Packsuit’s zipper seems better for ventilating while on waters (Yes, it’s dangerous so practise at your own risk!) and the price point is really good.

As the Ursuk dry suits are though bastards I don’t see myself investing on a new dry suit any time soon… But if you are looking for a dry suit mostly for packrafting, I’d choose between the two dry suits really designed for packrafting.

As the waters in Finland are already getting colder it’s timely to remind also of the cheaper option for a dry suit: neoprene wetsuit. These are not as comfortable (especially when wet the next day and crispy in the freezing morning air) nor are they as light but they are cheap alternative for stretching the packrafting season towards the winter. For packrafting I’ve used one of the cheapest a sub 40 euro model available from Motonet-stores in Finland. It’s designed for surfing and probably doesn’t excel even for that but it’s cheap and gets the job done. A real bargain.

New packrafts!

I’ve been mostly using an Alpacka Denali Llama which is a great packraft for my needs but occasionally either too small (as me and N found out last summer when trying to packraft with two people and two rucksacks on board) or too big and heavy. The big and heavy part usually leads to leaving it at home if it’s not really needed for the trip but a light raft would be nice for occasional river or lake crossing and generally as a tool to provide more freedom of choise in the backcountry. And now there are options to tackle both of the problems!

The Alpacka Explorer 42. Picture stolen from Packrafting Store website.

For the need of a two-person packraft there is now the Explorer 42:Nearly canoe-like two-person packraft by Alpacka Raft available on Packrafting Store. It’s 32 cm longer from the inside than my Llama and the inner doesn’t taper towards the front which means there should be really enough room for two people and two big packs. Just add few tie-downs to the stern as the big butt easily supports a rucksack or two. It weights only 2650 g (without seats) i.e. 1325 g per person. That’s not bad as the classic solo packrafts from Alpacka weight about 1 kg more! Add a pair of Trekking Pole Blades (140 g) to your trekking poles for canoe style paddling, use your sleeping pads as seats and you have a sub 3 kg packrafting package for two! (Just don’t take it on white water… Though some nice class I might go…)

The Alpacka CuriYak. Picture stolen from Alpacka website.

For the need of a sturdy but light tool for backcountry travel there has always been the Alpacka Scout. But with an inner length of 104 cm and limited buoyancy it’s not really meant for people of my size (186 cm tall). Roman Dial has been using a longer spray-decked special version “the Super Scout” but the design is not available for the public. Instead there is now the all new Alpacka CuriYak! It’s very interesting design with pointy bow and big stern with the standard 12 inch tubes but the tubes in the middle are only 10 inch in diameter. It’s sized like the standard Yak (i.e. has 10 cm more inner length than the Scout) but weights only 1,87 kg (versus 2,25 kg for the Yak). Unfortunately there is no spray-deck available for this one but a MYOS spray-deck is always a possibility… Anyhow, very interesting boat and if I could afford, I would definitely buy this one to accompany my Llama. (Then I could upgrade the Llama with the new spray-deck and skirt, add thigh-straps and so on. To pimp your packraft  take a look at Luck Mehl’s great tutotial.)

And there is also a lot lighter option for this category from Klymit (the company making the weird sleeping pads) the “Light Water Dingy”. As the name suggest it’s really meant for easy water and seems a bit dubious in my opinion but would probably do great job on easy crossings and would double as a very comfortable sleeping pad. Only problem is the 200 pound weight limit as I’m way over that, even without any gear! But for some this is probably an interesting option to the FlytePacker packraft (or for inflatable beach mattresses typically used on Finnish multisport competitions). Oh, it weights only about 650 grams and should cost around 250 euros. Not too bad.

Feel free to comment the post and the topic, especially if you have any first hand experience about the products mentioned here or links to user reports!

Social Hiking in the North

Seems that way too many of my posts start with the words ”it’s been silent here lately”. But… Well, it’s the truth. During the last two months I haven’t had motivation for bloggin, instead I’ve been working a bit and foraging quite a lot but haven’t done any hiking or similar outdoor activities (goes hand in hand with the blogging motivation). I’ve also spent quite some time figuring how to spend the next year or so. I had few cool plans and worked hard to carry them out but they got crashed…

But that’s not a reason to be depressed as it also means that I have time to do something else instead… Go hiking! And I guess hiking is also better topic for a blog post than writing about crashed future plans. (Though I might mention them in the future related to other topics.)

So, this post is about the plans and how you can follow things online.

Plans, plans, plans

The plan (named Hiking North) is to do three separate trips in the Northern parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland:

- Moskkugáisi Traverse: A fast & light style peak bagging and packrafting traverse from Signaldalen (Norway) to Kilpisjärvi (Finland).
- Poroeno-Reisaelva: A packraftring trip including some lakes and sections of Poroeno and Reisaelva rivers from Kilpisjärvi (Finland) to Saraelv (Norway).
- Sarek National Park: A week+ roundtrip hiking in Sarek National Park (Sweden) starting from Suorva.

MoskkugáisiTtraverse

Pältsan in July 2011.

The first trip, the Moskkugáisi traverse, is named after the highest peak on the route. I’ll be doing the trip with my good friend Tuomas (Who is working at Kilpisjärvi as a Wilderness guide for the autumn). The general plan is to:

- start from the valley of Signaldalen in Norway on Thursday 22.8.
- hike/climb to Bárrás (1419m)
- traverse the mountainous peaks of Pältsan (1442m), Moskkugáisi (1516m) and Juoksavátnjunni (1450m) in Sweden
- camp somewhere near Pältsastugan
- hike to Kummaeno and float it with packrafts to Finland
- hike along the road to Kilpisjärvi for cold beers.

This means some 60+km of hiking with decent elevation gain and about 30km of packrafting and we’ll try to complete it in two days. Have to see how it goes. The route should provide a bit of challenge, great views (weather permitting) and a nice gentle float with occasional sections of class II white water.

I tried to pack light but have to also take the autumn weather and temps into account. And my packraft and paddle are also quite heavy. As is my camera. Full skin-out weight in the start will be around 15 kg. For those interested, a pdf gear list of my planned kit for this trip is available here: Moskkugaisi-Traverse

Poroeno-Reisaelva packrafting

In camp while packrafting the Poroeno in July 2011.

The second trip is a packrafting trip with my girlfriend N. The plan is to:

- start from Kilpisjärvi probably on Sunday 26.8.
- hike along the Kalottireitti (Nordkalottleden) trail to Meekojärvi
- packraft the lakes to Poroeno river
- packraft along the Poroeno to the Norwegian border
- hike from ??? to Reisadalen
- packraft the Reisaelva as far as we can

We’ve planned it as a six-day trip with roughly 60:40 ratio of hiking and packrafting. Hiking along the trail is very easy but when in Norway we’ll hike completely off-trail in remote wild area but the terrain should be quite easy. The Poroeno section will have some challenging class IV rapids that we will portage as N doesn’t have any white water experience. But she’s a quick learner and we can probably get away with only few portages as the water level should be low. The lower part of Reisaelva that we’ll packraft should be easy, wide river with decent flow so there shouldn’t be any problems. The highlights of the trip will include the Meeko valley, the incredibly beautiful Reisadalen valley, covering some terrain completely new to me and hopefully some good packrafting.

For this trip I’ll be taking a bit more gear than for the Moskkugáisi Traverse bringing the full skin-out weight in the start to 20 kg mark. The core of the kit will remain about the same but if you’re interested in the details, take a look at the gear list: Poroeno-Reisaelva

Sarek National Park

Sarek in March 2010.

The third trip will be again with N. We will head to Sarek National Park in Sweden for a week+ roundtrip. The only solid plan we have is to start from Suorva dam on the North-East border of the National Park and do a roundtrip in the central part of the park. We will be packing food for about nine days and will be taking crampons for glacier travel but probably no packrafts. If weather permits we will try to bag some peaks and enjoy the views but time will tell how it goes…

Sarek is awesome in winter and should be equally awesome also in autumn. There are high alpine peaks, glaciers, big beautiful valleys, rich wildlife (including lynx, wolf, wolverine and bear!) and so on but very few visitors and no trails in the central parts of the park. Sounds great!

Again most of the kit for the Sarek trip will be the same but there are few minor adjustments and I’ll change the packrafting kit for crampons and hiking poles. And again, here’s a gear list for the details: Sarek-National-Park

Following the trips

As most of the trips will take place far away from cell phone reception I will be using a Yellowbrick satellite messaging device so I can share my position, progress and other information.

The Yellowbrick is state-of-the-art piece of kit that I’m testing for them and I will be using it at least to:
- send tracking signal every now and then so you can follow me on my YBlog page http://my.yb.tl/Vatnajokull2012
(The url is a relic from the ski expedition across Vatnajökull glacier earlier this year.)
- send tweets if there is something cool to share or the plans change
- maybe send a blog post or two from the wild using Yellowbrick App on my Samsung Galaxy Xcover

The coolest thing is that Yellowbrick is compatible with Social Hiking! I’ve just started using the Social Hiking service and I’m still only learning but it enables creating interactive maps showing my progress and the related (social) media. During the trips it will mostly mean plotting my tweets and blog posts on the map with my route. After the trips I’ll be also adding pics and maybe some other media too…

You can see all my maps on the Social Hiking site: http://www.shareyouradventure.com/user/maps/korpijaakko

In addition I’m planning also writing a short post to my blog after each trip.

Enjoy the rest of the summer! I’m quite sure I will…

- – -

And a little reminder: Remember also to enjoy the free berries, mushrooms and other delicacies of the season! At least in Finland there’s plenty of ripe blueberries, lingon berries are soon ripe and there’s a lot of delicious mushrooms. And according to Joe’s post, it’s the same thing in Norway.

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…

Some pictures from the last trip

I’m spending the week enjoying the summer in the country side and preparing for the upcoming year in the wilderness guide school (which starts next Monday), but at the mean time I’m also writing trip reports about the last two trips in the Lapland. The writing will take some time as there is so much to say…

But assuming that some of you are still interested about the trips, here are some teaser pictures from the first trip i.e. packrafting the Valtijoki, Poroeno and Lätäseno rivers. And to be exact: we portaged 3,5 bad rapids/drops on the Valtijoki, the Iso-Kurkkio rapid on Lätäseno and in the end we paddled about 34km of still water in the big white water raft of our friends to speed up the progress. On the first trip I took about 40 GB of pictures and video and on the second trip around 16 GB of pics, so it will take some time to sort them out. Especially the video as I’m still working with the Ultima Thule 2011 expedition video (Yes, lazy me. Very lazy.)

So, pictures from likely  the wildest rivers of Finland (and from to joyrney to get there…):

Getting started on the road side north from Kilpisjärvi. Notice the terrible load on my Golite Pinnacle...

Everything seems better on the Norwegian side...

Passing the Pitsusköngäs waterfall. Didn't boat it. Some 35km of walking and 5km of rocky packrafting behind us.

Arriving to the open wilderness hut of Kolbmajoki. It's around 4:00 am and there where people inside sleeping so we spent the night in tent and next day in the hut as we had done the walking a day faster than planned.

At the beginning of Valtijoki. Getting ready for six days of boating. The Ursuit AWS drysuits were awesome.

Yours truly running the first drop of one of the rapid systems at Valtijoki.

Tuomas scouting the rest of the rapid system. We portaged it as we don't know enough about waterfalls to judge the safety...

The water level was low and Valtijoki is very rocky, and occasionally very shallow.

Me enjoying one of the many small drops of the Valtijoki. Notice the cord which got wrapped around my paddle. I cut it shorter immediately after that happened...

Yours truly in camp at Poroeno after the first day of boating.

Tuomas climbing up to a ledge to provide safety after swimming the class 4 Pirunportti.

Tuomas running down the class 4-5 Munnikurkkio rapid (I'd say max class 4 on the low water we had.)

The abandoned border guard station of Munnikurkkio. Psst, there is an open sauna there.

Tuomas about to capsize in the Munnikurkkio rapid. The older Alpacka boat design is a lot more prone to capsize than the new with the big butt.

The white water raft crew that we catched up at Munnikurkkio. Great folks! Three of them wilderness guides...

Going lite with Shangri La 3 and the big raft. Still water and tailwind.

Sunset seen from the Iso-Kurkkio open wilderness hut. The evening/night skies were great!

The class 4+ Iso-Kurkkio rapid. A no-go for our skills.

Yeap, a swimming arctic lemming. They are surprisingly quick swimmers. And often angry!

Sunset in the last camp.

About 5km to go. The last 15km of Lätäseno is perfectly flat water with a minimal current.

Trip done! From left: Antti, Anna-Maija, Tuomo, Anni, Tuomas and yours truly.

Hope you enjoyed the pics. More text and some pictures to come later this week!

Stealing little lines in the wild white

The first trip is now done!

On last Friday night we started a 45km walk-in from Didnujohka river. We walked some 15km for the first evening/night and on Saturday we walked the remaining 30km and tried some short packraft runs in a dry and rocky rapids of Urttasjohka. We spent Sunday eating and resting on an open wilderness hut (as we arrived there 4:00 am the previous night). The last week was spent on a great river continuum of the Käsivarsi region: first the 15km the Valtijoki (fast, rocky, low water, many drops, we portaged 3,5 big drops), the Poroeno (run the whole river in packrafts: swift, rocky, partially classified as class 4 but easy now with low water) and the Lätäseno (big volume, big and powerful rapids, we did one class 4 and one class 4-5 with clear lines, but had to portage one class 4+ that we didn’t dare to run even with a big white water raft). A magnificent trip with a deep learning curve, nice weather and excellent company.

Starting the walk to Somasjärvi a bit over a week ago.

I’ll post some more pictures after I get back from my second trip… Last evening I was doing laundry, eating and repacking at the Kilpisjärvi and now I’m waiting for a boat ride across the lake. And the heading into the hills with my girlfriend and one packraft.