Wanha Witonen paddling trip

In case anyone is wondering, Nokia Lumia phones sink pretty fast when they jump into a lake. I have a new one now, but I wasn't going to risk it trying to escape as well while canoeing and kayaking. I kept it in a waterproof case and only took it out on dry land so I don't have many pictures from the paddling trip so this is going to be short.


It was a few weeks ago and I only now have time to post it up. We paddled the Wanha Witonen route from Petäjävesi to Jämsänkoski about 52km's. Not too far, but ok for a few days paddling.

I was on the planning team for this trip so I was one of the people responsible for making sure everything went as planned. Despite certain people moaning about getting up early we actually managed to get our kit loaded up and be on the road by 7am.

The week was broken up into 3 days of paddling and 2 days hiking. I had made a paddling rotation so that everyone got to paddle front and back of a canoe and in a kayak. First day I was paddling with Seishi and as you can see our canoe was full. On each paddling day there was at least one set of rapids to go down. Nothing crazy, but ok for the first time hitting rapids in a canoe. It was all good and we before the fist set of rapids we pulled up on the shore to check out the situation. I thought Seishi was going to be a good partner and we'd handle the rapid no problem.
Hmm... It started well. We passed the first obstacle and back paddled to line ourselves up to shoot between two rocks to go under a bridge where we had to immediately back paddle again and ferry ourselves to the left side of the rapids and continue dodging another set of rocks. So we passed the first two rocks came to the bridge and I started to back paddle. Seishi was paddling like a maniac, but FORWARDS! I shouted, but it was too late the current took us and we turned sideways and got stuck on two rocks. The water was trying to pull the canoe under, but we managed to keep it upright and push ourselves off of the rocks and going down the rest of the rapid backwards like a pair of nutters.

The weather was unreal. The week before we had been practising on a small river close to the school and it had been snowing. This week I got sun burnt on the first day of paddling, a few of the days the temperature hit 27 degrees!!

Iso Hiekka was our 2nd camp site, a nice place with a kitchen platform or whatever it is? and a little beach. It was a long day of paddling from the previous campsite to here and the sun finally went down at about 11pm.

On our second hiking day we visited an old growth forest a few km's from camp and came across a spring fed lake with ridiculously clear water which was handy cos I was in desperate need to refill my water bottle.

Yes still in Finland! Last day of paddling and surprisingly no one had capsized the entire trip. Like all of our previous trips the weather was perfect for the activity, but unlike the previous trips, this was like a real holiday! No stress, no fighting with the cold, no carrying heavy back packs or having to drive for days to get the location. The only disappointing thing is that we no longer get any sort of paddling proficiency on this course. Oh well.  

On another note. This never happens in Bristol. Just hanging out at home watching an idiot abroad when a message appears across the screen saying that there's a bear down town and police are warning people to stay away. On the screen 'karhu' is the word for bear. One of over 200 words in Finnish for bear, another joy of the Finnish Language.

Laters.

Survival night

Only 5 weeks left!! The end of this course is hectic. Ive been real busy with school stuff and had no time to mess around on here. I got my business plan and ski trip plan done and sent off on time and the last few weeks I've been busy planning next weeks paddling trip and done a few things in between.

Two weeks ago we had a kind of mini survival test. Nothing too serious, we just headed out to the forest in the morning and had a short session on how to go about make an emergency shelter using only what we could find around us. Then we got sent off alone to build a shelter and stay in it overnight with only what we had with us which wasn't a lot.

I chose my spot, which was a flat-ish area where I could lay down, not close to an ants nest and not under any dead standing trees to fall on me during the night. There is no right or wrong way to build an emergency shelter, as long as it protects you from wind and rain as much as possible and gives a little insulation from the cold ground your good. I wasn't sure what kind of shelter I was going to build, but I started by wedging a small fallen tree trunk against a spruce tree that was going to be the main roof support.

Then I got more of the same logs to make cross pieces for the roof and carved some small wedges to help them stay in place. To make this task a little more realistic, even though it was far from a true survival situation. The only tools we were allowed to use were whatever we would normally have with us on a day hike in the forest, so I had my knife. That was also the case with our clothing and food situation. I had my regular clothes for a hike in the forest and just a bottle of water and afternoon snack of two bananas. No sleeping bags or food to cook.

I also used birch twigs to tie the cross pieces on to make everything a little more stable. A little unnecessary, maybe I wouldn't do it in a real survival situation if I had no time, but I knew it wasn't getting dark until 22:00 then so I was in no rush.

I weaved branches of rowan between my roof supports so I would have something to build the actual roof on. Something was starting to take shape and I began collecting spruce branches to build the roof. I was going to need a lot if I wanted it to be even slightly water proof. This took some time, I don't know how long I was doing it, but I had a proper sweat on when I finished.

Home sweet home. I made myself a bed of more spruce branches and put a log in front to try and stop me from rolling out during the night. I had my bag with me. It only had the water and binoculars inside, I'd eaten the bananas and it didn't end up making a very comfortable pillow. I still had a few hours of daylight left so I went on a bit of a mission because the mosquito's had started to come out and were already doing my head in when I was sitting around my camp. There was a forest fire warning so we couldn't light fires, so no warming up by a fire either.
When it finally got dark I tried to sleep a little, but no luck there. With my hood done up as tight as possible and my bag wrapped around my face to keep the mossies out, I could still hear them buzzing around my head. Eventually they disappeared when the temperature dropped. I was OK for a while, the spruce branches actually did quite a good job. I had maybe an hour or two of sleep then the cold crept in and just after 03:00 it started to get light and the bloody birds started singing. We had to orienteer to a meeting point by 07:00 to get picked up and taken back to school. At 03:30 I gave up trying to sleep so got up and went hiking to warm up and start to make my way back.

Alright I was a little hungry, tired and cold, but it was a pretty good experience and I'm confident enough that if it happened for real it would be fine.

Laters