Packing the Raft – Kilpisjärvi-Reisadalen

The second of the three #HikingNorth trips is done and me and N are heading towards Sarek National Park for the third trip before returning back to South. While we are hiking in the Sarek, here are some pictures from the second trip from Kilpisjärvi (Finland) to Reisadalen (Norway). It didn’t go quite according to the plan but turned out to be a nice packrafting trip after all, thanks to the great float down the Reisaelva river.

The trip started from Kilpisjärvi on Monday morning – in very uninspiring rain. As we gained altitude the rain turned into wind-driven sleet and soon into snow. The temperature was around zero and it started to look more like an early winter trip than autumn trip. As the shell clothing slowly failed and the weather stayed miserable we decided to cut the day short and spend the first night in open wilderness hut at Saarijärvi.

The second day the weather improved a little bit being mostly foggy with a bit of drizzle. The views at Kuonjarjoki seemed quite similar to what Mark and Roger had about two months earlier. After a lunch break at Kuonjarjoki we continued to Meekojärvi. As we descended down to the valley the clouds broke for a while. We slept  in tent near the open hut at Meekojärvi with large reindeer guarding the surroundings.

The next day was supposed be the start for one and half days of packrafting the lake system from Meekojärvi to Porojärvi followed by a section of the Poroeno river. After pushing through the thick bush to the shore and getting the packrafts inflated we soon found the wind to be too much for the little rafts. We had about 45 degree head wind that was high enough to create breaking waves on the small lake. This made paddling hard and slow and thus we soon decided to pack the rafts and walk the Northern shores of the lakes towards East. And as we were already nearly a day behind our schedule we decided to skip the Poroeno river all together and take a short cut walk to Reisadalen. This saved us a day but we also missed the big river packrafting…

We crossed the Valtijoki river which had considerably lower water level than in mid-July the last year. The water level was probably too low even for packrafting.

On the first two days on Kalottireitti trail we met something like over 40 people but during the third and fourth day going off-trail we did’t see any humans, only reindeers and birds. After a hard day of walking (the rucksack felt quite heavy with all the packrafting gear) we camped near the Norwegian border at Inggajärvi lake.

The next day we crossed the border walking towards Reisadalen with the Jierta fjell as a landmark in the horizon. On the way we crossed Gieddajohka river with one packraft (taking first packs to the other side and then N). After the disappointments when trying to paddle the lakes it made me feel that there was maybe some point in carrying the packrafts after all. At least we didn’t have to swim. We camped on the shore of a little lake with reindeers accompanying us.

The fifth day started with rain and overcast but it didn’t slow us down. The slope down to Reisadalen valley was occasionally a bit hard, maybe a 30 degree slope with wet crass and as the soles of my trail runners were pretty worn out I took occasional slides down the slope but luckily there were trees to stop the glisades. After the descent we arrived to Neddrefosshytta, admired the surroundings, had lunch and inflated the rafts and started the float down.

We floated only about an hour as I wanted to find a good camping spot well before the dark. And we found a very nice spot on a gravel bar with enough drift wood for a small fire and good views to the surrounding canyon. Rain showers and some late-season bugs (no bugs up on the fjells but quite some in the valley) interrupted occasionally the evening by the fire but it wasn’t too bad.

The final morning of the trip broke with spectacular views and we finally got some real sun shine! Morning chores were soon followed by a good swift float down stream the easy but fast river. The Reisaelva has a good flow and there are no real rapids on the way from Neddrefosshytta to Saraelv and thus it makes great packrafting also for beginners.

A little downside on the Reisaelva is the quite frequent boat traffic up and down the river. This didn’t bother as too badly but it removes the feeling of real wilderness quite effectively.

The canyon/valley is a great sight in itself but one the major sights on the way is the Mollisfossen waterfall. Unfortunately it’s on the other side of the river than the Kalottireitti trail but for a boater that isn’t a problem at all. And the 269 meter high waterfall is worth a visit but crossing the river without a boat would require swimming is swift current.

The 25km float from Neddrefosshytta to Saraelv (the end of public road with a good parking space) took only about 6 hours of lazy packrafting so it is good float! Even though we had to skip about half of the originally planned packrafting the Reisaelva saved a lot and left me wanting more. I think that on this trip I also understood better the role of packrafts as wilderness travel tools in addition to tools for accessing remote rapids and having easy white water fun. The packrafts are equally suitable for both, though for wilderness travel one should reserve enough time for things like serious headwinds on flat water. Our schedule didn’t allow any slack and it would be better to reserve around eight days for the originally planned route (instead of the six days we had).

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Once again The Social Hiking map (based on Yellowbrick beacons) gives you a good idea about the trip but once again the distance covered (149km) feels quite a bit exaggerated. The Yellowbrick YBlog page gives you some additional info like some speed figures. Pictures linked to the map are coming later when I get the last week+ trip in Sarek done… And you can also follow the trip on Social Hiking as well as on Twitter!

Racing Style – The Moskkugaisi Traverse

The first part of the “Hiking North” trip series (the Moskkugaisi Traverse) is done and after two days of pizzas, burgers and beer at friend’s place in Kilpisjärvi I’m feeling ready for the next trip (the Poroeno-Reisaelva packrafting). And before the next trip it might be good idea to share some initial thoughts from the first trip.

I have to say that the trip turned out being a bit harder than I expected but it was doable anyway and gave me an idea about the type II fun the Alaskan racers often talk about…

After some five hours of sleep we started the trip from Signaldalen at Thursday morning 09:30 a.m. and finished it to the roadside South of Kilpisjärvi at about 03:15 a.m. on Saturday morning. According to the Social Hiking map based on our Yellowbrick beacons we covered 119km and gained 3274 vertical meters of altitude. For me that feels like quite a bit too much as measured from a paper map the distance should be more like 90km, though the height gain seems right. But on the other hand the beacons seem to be on right places and GPS shouldn’t lie. So who knows, maybe we covered 119km in 41,75 hours?

We started from the parking area at the bottom of the valleys and started to walk up the trail to the peak of Bárrás.

After visiting the peak we ascended back to our backpacks and started the walk towards the rest of the peaks hauling our backpacks up to a pass at 1063m and visiting the Pältsan from there.

After summiting the Pältsan it was very clear that we had underestimated the time needed for hiking over 3000 vertical meters (of which well over 2000 meters with 15 kg backpacks). This meant that we couldn’t start the high route traverse of the Moskkugáisi during that day as it wouldn’t be wise to do it in the dark and camp sites are hard to find up on the ridge. So we camped on the fjell side: two man under a small one-man tarp… I also had a summer weight sleeping bag and as the temps were below zero had a bit cold night.

We left the camp at 07:00 a.m. and headed up to the Moskkugáisi followed by a spectacularly scenic high traverse to the ridge leading to Juoksvátnjunni.

The last peak to visit was the Juoksvátnjunni with cool sharpish rocky ridgeline leading to the summit.

After the last summit we walked to the trail leading from Pältsastugan to Kummavuopio, walked a bit along the trail and then inflated our packrafts and started the float down along the Kummaeno river.

To our surprise the Kummaeno offered quite poor packrafting. It was fun for a while but soon we got frustrated with the very rocky rapids and several sections too shallow for packrafting. The going was also slow and we were again running out of daylight. And we were also miserably wet and cold. We took out at the edge of Oaggujeaggi bog, made a quick fire using a gas stove as a lighter and had a proper one-hour break with hot food (the first and only proper break excluding the camp).

After the break we packed the rafts and started walking along the trail to the abandoned farm of Kummavuopio. From Kummavuopio we headed towards the road on the Finnish side of the border following very wet snow mobile trail and doing two river crossing with packrafts in the dark and enjoying a section of quite bad brush between the rivers. This was then followed with a  few kilometers of forested uphill to the road where a friend picked as up at 03:15 a.m. (Sorry, no photos from this sections as it was dark and I was tired and too busy to get the trip finished.)

I have to admit that I was quite tired after the trip but I did enjoy it in a twisted way. I don’t really recommed doing the trip this way but as it’s a spectacular route in my opinion I’ll be writing later about better ways to do it…

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The Social Hiking map gives you a good idea about the trip but I forgot to use the #HikingNorth hashtag on some tweets so it’s missing some tweets but the missing ones are available from the Yellowbrick YBlog page. Pictures linked to the map are coming later when I get the two other trips done…

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…

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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.

Done and to be done

It has been silent here for a long time. But I’m not dead. Sorry.

I thought it would be good to brush some of the dust and cobwebs away and shortly tell what I’ve been up to and what I’m planning to do. And also to remind you that: the rivers are flooding, days are warm and sunny, mosquitoes are few and you should be out playing rather than reading this!

Excuses and explanations

During the last few weeks I’ve been quite busy with the Wilderness Guide School. Luckily in a positive way i.e. we’ve been a lot in the outdoors and I haven’t had an access to computer to blog. First we were on a white water raft skipper course at Jongunjoki, Ruunaa and Haapajoki rivers (all class 2 rivers in Eastern Finland).

The water on lake sections was still very white in early May.

But water was also available in liquid and quickly moving form.

And there was also mixture of liquid and solid water to play with…

Then we were kayaking and canoeing on Vaikkojoki (nice small river, good going with the flood, mostly class 1) and Kermankoski (not a river but a bigger class 2 rapid for doing white water stuff).

I managed to do also some packrafting! (Vaikkojoki, Myllykoski, class 2.) Pic by Jukka.

Swamping a canoe at Kermankoski (class 2). Airbags would have saved the day.

Kayaks don’t get swamped. I love those old Corsica kayaks! (J paddling one in the pic.)

And the last week we’ve been outdoors learning about geology, birds and plants. And this week we’ll be training and doing our exams on köysitoiminnanohjaaja (instructor for top rope climbing and rappelling) and melontaohjaaja (Paddling Instructor) so it’ll again be a busy week…

And when at the school I’ve preferred spending the evenings outdoors instead of blogging. I feel a bit quilty for this as I’ve promised to write about several things, and still hope to, but if I can choose between being outdoors or sitting behind a screen… It’s a no brainer! I’m lucky to have this chance to spend my time outdoors and I’m trying to use it as well as I can.

And during the previous weekends I’ve been packing and moving again (as I won’t have time to do it later this month). If I can choose between spending time outdoors and having an apartment… Well, it’s a lot harder but I’ve made my decision for the summer. I decided to be homeless for few months. An apartment would be nice to store all my gear and other stuff but luckily I can store them at my parents place and I can live in a tent…

This all means that I have to slightly reconsider my blogging. I like to write long and thorough trip reports and reviews but it seems that even more I like being outside on trips and putting the gear in use. This means that I’ll try to change my style a bit and write fewer words and instead use more photos. Have to see how it goes…

Future hiking plans

I’m planning to do a little speed hiking trip at the end of the month to see if I like it. Me and another guide student J plan to walk the 133km Karhunpolku trail in three days, meaning about 45km a day. It’s not especially long trail or fast pace but if I’ll get it done it will be the fastest hike I’ve ever done. I’ve been putting together a light kit list for this one and will later share it for comments and ideas.

Me after walking 105km in less than 24 hours last October. Hopefully the Karhunpolku will feel better…

about 45km a day. I’ve been putting together a light kit list for this one and will later share it for comments and ideas. In mid June I’m planning to do about two weeks hiking trip to North with my girlfriend N. At the moment the plan is to start from South-East part of Muotkatunturit wilderness, walk through the area to North-East and cross a road to Paistunturitwilderness areas and continue from there towards East and the next road.

This makes some 200+km of walking trough very nice and wild but gentle tundra and fjells. Should be a great trip – if the hordes of mosquitoes just stay at bay.

After the trip I have to do some work to get money to buy food and get back to wild place. But after the two weeks of work I might do a canoeing trip or maybe head to Northern Sweden to hike. Have to see how things turn out.

A little bonus trip report

And the third point of the post: Rivers are still flooding (at least in Eastern and Northern Finland), the days are already very warm and the are no bugs (well, not many anyway). So it’s great time to spend time outdoors! Especially paddling the little flooding rivers runnable only for few weeks each spring.

It doesn’t even take too much time. The last week I kayaked Kuuttijoki with my coursemate Huck. It is about 15km of little flooding river in Tohmajärvi municipality in Eastern Finland. The trip took about 6 hours all together: an hour of packing, about hour of driving there, three hours on the river and the drive back. The river was unfamiliar for us but with some beta we thought it would suite well for our skill level and should be easily doable in flood. And it was.

Unfortunately Huck had some family man and house owner duties to do and we were not able to start before 18:00 or so. We drove to village of Tuupovaara, checked the place where we would end up and left my car there. We checked the river from two bridges on the way to the starting point and noticed that the water level was high, as it was supposed to be. This was a good thing. We found our starting place, donned drysuits and head into the water.

One of the bridges from a different perspective.

The river was quite nice mixture of small lakes, calm sections and class 1 and 2 white water. The beta wasn’t very helpful with the high water levels but most of the rapids were easy and rocks well covered under water. Only harder part was at Kalliokoski (class 2-) where we intentionally chose the not-recommended right braid of the rapid (probably class 2) and I ended up back first into a sweeper (a tree hanging above the water) and swimming from there. After hitting my helmet to the rocks a couple of times I managed to get out of the kayak  and into a small eddy, emptied my kayak and got back to the business. So no problem but it serves as good reminder about not to be too confident in moving water!

A little drop and bridge not mentioned in the beta…

The rest of the river was nice and varying, on some parts there were a lot of summer houses but some parts were wilder. We saw numerous birds including two swans. And after the last 700m long rapid a beaver tried deport to us away from it’s nest by splashing the water loudly ahead of us. We left the next to be and paddled to the last lake a bit after sun set. It was a great ending for the trip.

The river was really nice and it was a bit pity that we were in such hurry (running out of daylight because of late start). And it’s not the only nice little river in the world. There are myriads of nice little rivers to paddle and this is the time of the year to do that. And also big rivers can be nice for those with the skills required, just read about two guys who had done a 100 km at Ounasjoki in 7 hours 37 minutes, thanks to the high flood. (The flow was 1250 cubic meters per second, we had about 6m^3/s at Kuuttijoki…) That’s epic!

Huck somewhere on the Kuuttijoki.

So, as a closure for this post: Remember to go out and enjoy the nature! It’s great.

The last of the season

Everything comes to an end. And so did the skiing season of the year 2012. (And as you might have guessed, this is not a trip report from Vatnajökull, sorry for that. It’s still under writing…)

Doesn't seem like skiing season, does it?

Today was a great day! Probably the warmest day of the spring this far with temps closing to +15C with blue skies and hardly any wind. It was also a good day to end the skiing season for this winter. There’s hardly any snow left to ski in the Southern Finland but there is still ice on the lake and snow like slush on top of it. And as it was freezing the night before I though it would be good for skiing.

I slept long, lounged around eating Sunday brunch and got on my skis around noon, way too late to make use of the thin layer of crust formed during the night. I packed some spare clothing into a dry sack, tossed a bottle of juice to the side pocket and attached the skis to my backpack. (By the way, the Osprey Talon 33 is totally lacking sensible ski attachment points!) I walked to the lake to find nice and skiable ice near the beach at the shadow of an old grown spruce forest.

Skiing started good and felt great after fwo without skiing! I followed the shore line towards a little island some five kilometers away.  I tried to ski as much as possible along the whiter areas on the ice and follow old snowscooter tracks when available. And I really tried to avoid the very dark areas: signs of thin ice or open water. This went quite well and for most of the time the thin layer of frozen slush (on top of very wet slush followed hopefully by strong layer of ice) carried me well but was soft enough for proper kick and glide. Judging smart route became soon automatic and skiing was good.

Sun shine from the blue sky and no wind. It was really warm! A T-shirt and shorts would have been better option than long trekking pants and a powerstretch fleece but I wanted to have some padding in case I’d fall through the ice…

But I managed to reach the little island without falling in the ice and went for a little walk on it listening to the concerto of birds, unfortunately not being able to identify too many of them by the sound (as I should be able to by early June to pass an exam). I drank some juice, ate few candies I found from my pocket and jumped back on my skis after enjoying the sun on a rock near the shoreline.

On my way back the sun had done its job and the surface of the ice was soft and I fell into the slushy layer several times. My boots were thoroughly wet (at least I got confirmation for them leaking as they seemed to be doing already in Iceland) but in the nice warm weather it wasn’t a problem. Skiing back on the ever softening ice, many times pushing trough ankle-deep partially frozen slush was slower than the good skiing to the island and the way back took about 45 minutes instead of the half an hour.

I came back to the shore, took of my skis, improvised yet another way to attach them to my backpack and walked away on the sand. That was it. The last skiing trip of the season. Next, it’s hopefully packrafting, kayaking and other spring-time outdoors things.

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For outdoors oriented people the spring is interesting time in Finland. At some point in April or May (depending on the year and where you live) there is a short period when many kind of outdoor sports are possible at the same time and around the same area: There is still snow to ski, but sunny forests are snow free for walking as are little dirt roads for running or biking. Tivers are running free of ice for kayaking, canoeing or packrafting and flooding enables running the little streams usually too small for any kind of boat. And it’s also warm, there is already plenty of daylight but no mosquitoes! It’s truly magnificent time of the year, though only for a very short period of time.

I originally planned to take the advantage of this short period and do a combined skiing, hiking/running and packrafting day trip but unfortunately I was a week too late for my plan as the ice on the middle of the lake was way too rotten to safely cross. The original plan included skiing about 5km across the lake to a little stream, leaving the skis there and walking or running about 5km of dirt road upstream where I would have inflated my packraft and paddled down couple of kilometers of the little flooding stream back to my skis and skied back home. Unfortunately I was too late for this and actually I didn’t even have the time because of guide school related paperwork… (Paperwork be cursed! Wilderness Guides should be trained and work outdoors, not behind a desk!)

I published my little plan and the little trip report here because I hope that they’ll inspire people to go out and enjoy the spring! Especially in the Northern parts of Scandinavia the possibilities to combine different means of travel on the same day on the same area is still very much possible and I hope you’d take advantage of this and enjoy the sunny days ahead! Or did you already do it?