| @ Mon 01/01/2007 | |
| Comments | Welcome to the new year! We spend six days between Christmas and the New Year 250 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle in Lapland, in Saariselkä to be exact. Tomi's parents have moved there recently. On our first day there, Wednesday December 27th, we ski an 8K loop in the neighborhood. There are a lot of tracks around, and some of them are illuminated. However, this is not a proper winter season yet, and because of that some of the most interesting tracks (namely those not illuminated) are not properly taken care of. You can check the condition of the tracks online. In the evening we head to the Saariselkä city, and visit a newly opened brewery. They carry two beers: an unfiltered light lager and a dark lager. The former is delicious. Unfortunately, their minimal website is only in Finnish (even if tourists pour in Saariselkä from all directions: Japan, England, France, Spain, Russia, ...), but they advertise that you can also pay in gold (people used to come to Lapland to prospect gold --- I guess tourists still do). We have quite a snowstorm on Thursday morning so we skip skiing and spend the day driving to Inari and visiting Sami Museum and the Northern Lapland Nature Centre Siida. On our way we stop to admire the view over the Inari lake. Friday starts grey and cloudy. We head out for a 17 kilometer skiing trip to Kiilopää, a mountain fell rising about 500 meters above the sea level. We cross another minor mountain fell called Ahopää on our way (see the blue pictures at right). We take the illuminated track back, since it is getting dark already. Saturday, December 30th, opens with a clear sky and freezing temperatures, about 10 degrees celcius below zero. A great day for skiing! After an hour of skiing we stop at a hut to snack. No one has put up the fire yet, so we briefly munch the sandwiches and curiously follow foraging activities of Siberian jays (Perisoreus infaustus) and Siberian tits (Parus cinctus) around. We continue before we are totally frozen. We hit the unbeaten path over to Iisakkipää with a plan to go over the pass, but soon unsure of our location, we turn back. The view from up there is gorgeous, and the light mystic. Once we reach the maintained tracks again, we meet the lady we've seen every day we've been skiing. She seems to be an avid skier and fond of routes less travelled. She also gives us good advice about where to go, next time ... We finish the day with a good 3K downhill to Saariselkää¤, and then with a light climb back to Laanila. When back in our lodging we are greeted and treated with the hefty root vegetable stew with spam(sic!) --- yucky. On Sunday, the new year's eve, we climb up and sled down the 1K hill from Kaunispää. We have an early dinner at Pirkon Pirtti before getting onto the bus to Rovaniemi. We spend the new year in the train, watching the fireworks in Oulu. If you wonder why the pictures are so blue and some of them unfocused, it is because there is not much light and certainly not enough for our Canon Powershot: this time of the year the sun does not get above the horizon at all during the day. If the sky is all cloudy and there is no moon, it is practically pitch black. Quite depressing, isn't it? Other anecdotes:
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