I'm back from sunny Lapland once again, still in one piece more or less and have unfortunately left the winter behind me for the last time this year.
I have done quite a lot in the last ten days, but it feels like yesterday when I was packing my ski's to the trailer in winter less Kuru to drive 1000km north to Hammastunturi wilderness area to begin the solo ski trip which was one of the reasons I applied for the course in the first place. Although I still have many weeks left and a lot to do to pass the course, the Bear ski is what the program has been building up to from the beginning.
After the long drive all day and half the night, we arrived in Kuttura village, a very small Saami reindeer herder village of twenty one people in the middle of no-where at about 02.30. everyone tried to get a little sleep before the sun came up which for some of us was no sleep. That morning was bloody cold! coming from plus degrees and no snow in Kuru to about a metre of snow and I don't know how many minus degrees in Kuttura. With numb hands and feet we changed our clothes, packed our sledges and headed off to find the starting point where we would part ways for the next eight days.
Finding our starting location was easy, we ate a little breakfast and as we were ready said goodbye. It was cold, but perfect skiing conditions.
With a blue sky and the sun shining. I left in search of my first camp.
That was pretty much my route. We each planned our own routes before the trip and any changes we made along the way were to be messaged to our teachers. The red circles were my camp sites with what nights I stayed there. The green circles were our check points where on the third and sixth days and our teachers stayed the entire time. Kuttura village in the top right corner was where the cars were left. In total I skied about 65km which isn't far, but I had a heavy sledge to pull behind me and the exercise wasn't about skiing as far as you can. It was about being on your own in the wilderness for eight days.
A few twists and turns aside, I got to my planned camp location and had a nightmare setting up my shelter. It was really windy and every time I pegged one point of my shelter out the wind would rip it out of the snow. After almost two hours and a lot of swear words I got it together, got a fire going, cooked some warm food and went to bed.
Up at 07:00, packed up and skiing by 09:00 turned out to be the norm. I was expecting an easy second day skiing over a nice flat bog to my next camp and it started well, but the wind had other ideas by blowing a bloody gale. I had to find some shelter in the forest to eat lunch before battling on to my camp.
Look how clean my jacket looked. It does not look like that now!
The wind had dropped by the next morning and after breakfast it was time to find the first checkpoint and go for a day trip up Jyppyrämaa hill.
A spot of lunch on top the hill before skiing down back to my camp. I had so much fun this day I decided to change my route to be able to take more day trips without my sledge. So on my way back I skied through the check point again to inform of my route changes.
I woke a few times the previous night thinking someone was shining a torch into my shelter, but it was just a ridiculously bright moon. On my way to the next camp as well as the usual I found wolverine tracks and these otter tracks going into and back out of the bog.
When I got to my planned camp sites I would usually spend a little time skiing around to search for a half decent place to set up before putting up my shelter and digging out a fire pit. Doing everything with ski's on until you had dug a trench to move around in took a bit of getting used to. It was easy to forget that even though the ski's would keep you on top of the snow, as soon as you step off them you would sometimes sink almost up to your waist.
This was about the half way point and everything had gone well up till now. The next day was a trip up to Karhupalo.
Despite the noise my ski's were making I managed to get pretty close to a female Capercaillie on my way up the hill. When I got to the top I didn't have the views I got from the top of Jyppyrämaa through the trees, so I climbed a tree at the top of the hill to have a look around and get some pics. In the distance you can see Jyppyrämaa with the white top.
The following day was the second checkpoint day. As I went to leave my camp to find the checkpoint location the pocket I kept my compass in was open and there was no compass inside. Luckily I had a spare compass and I had a pretty good guess as to where I lost the other one.
After finding the checkpoint and having a little chat with Mikko teacher I headed back up Karhupalo to the tree in search of the missing compass. I followed my tracks from the previous day that were the only tracks on the hill. I saw the Caperciallie in the same spot and got all the way to the tree without finding the compass, but at the base of the tree under a branch I had been swinging upside down on, just sticking out of the ground was some red string and the compass. Tidy, saved €30 there.
Popped out to get some water from the stream for breakfast before it got dark. I filled my kettle and pots straight away and it didn't matter that the water would freeze in them over night because I could just bang it on the cooker in the morning to melt and boil up. I preferred that than sleeping with water bottles in my sleeping bag not to freeze and wondering if they would leak or not? I only melted snow for drinking water once. I didn't want to waste my cooker fuel, so heated it over a fire and I got disgusting smokey water that the taste took ages to get rid of.
Crossing another big bog on my way to find the next camp, it looked like the weather had turned with a little snow in the air, but it wasn't long before the sun came out again and I hung my mittens over the frame of the sledge attached to my belt.
It took me a little over two hours to pull my sledge seven km's and I was at my camp by 11:10. The skiing conditions had been so good the entire trip I was covering ground a lot faster than I thought I would. Especially hearing the horror stories of last years student barely making two km's in a whole day! I messaged Mikko to tell him I was moving further on and went to grab my mittens from behind me, but the buggers wernt there.
I thought about leaving them behind, but decided that I had found my compass the day before so I'd just ski back to find my mittens. I dumped my sledge at the river and headed back. three and a half km's later I found my mittens sitting in the snow. They added seven km's to my day, but I was still at my intended camp site in time for lunch and in the end set up camp and stayed there.
I'm glad I went back for the mittens cos that night the temperature went down to -18c, the previous nights had been between -12 and -15. I didn't feel the cold in my sleeping bag it was just when I had to get up and out of my sleeping bag did the cold hit me.
Picture quality is rubbish, but a little visitor from the previous evening. I'm pretty sure its a Short-eared owl, so a medium sized owl. I just saw it from the corner of my eye as it flew into the tree. It didn't make a sound and sat there for about twenty minutes, it only flew away when I tried to ski closer to it to get a better picture. When I got too close it dive bombed out of the tree and only opened its wings a few metres from the ground and disappeared in a second.
F-ing freezing morning. I got my stuff packed up as quickly as I could and headed off for the last day of skiing on my own in search of the common camp for the last night. Just over a kilometre into my day as I was thinking about the next river crossing I realised that I had left my rope hanging in the bloody tree's I was camped at. So down with the sledge again and back to the camp to get my rope.
I'm glad I stopped for water before pulling my sledge up that hill. It wasn't very high, but it was steep!! I had sweat pouring off me trying to side step my way up the icy slope, I almost got dragged back down it a few times.
I had no problems orienteering to the common camp and setting up for the last time. I found a few friends already there and most turned up eventually. I found out that one girl had been taken to hospital with frost bite on her cheeks the day before and two others had the beginning of frost bite, but were OK, and one lad had hurt his back on the very first day and didn't move the entire trip, but he is in the full of shit club so who knows?
That night was the coldest of the trip -22, but someone said it was -25 so we'll go with that. Either way it was cold enough and in the morning we skied our freezing bodies back to the cars and started the drive home.
The best experience of the course so far and one of the best things I have done!!
Laters.
