Catchy title eh! Blunt and to the point, much like the Finns themselves. In March 2013 as some of you may know, I attended an advanced survival course in the Dividal area of Norway. This gave me a taste for life north of the Arctic Circle, an experience I wished to repeat in the winter of 2013. There was the option of the trip to Jokkmokk but this idea didn't float my boat though I may have missed a trick there; I've been impressed by all of the trip reports. Anyway what's done is done and I decided I'd go as far north in Finland as was practicable. Why Finland? Well, because erm, just because really. Why not? It just took my fancy.
The Finnish have an excellent website dedicated to their natural attractions and it was on this website that I chanced upon a section dedicated to the Inari Hiking Area. Inari is about 40km north of Ivalo airport to which there are about 3 flights per day via Helsinki. Getting to Ivalo was the easy part, getting up to Inari was not quite so easy to plan via the Internet. Rather than try to decipher Finnish bus timetables I decided to walk/ski instead, after all it's only 40km. I ordered 1/50,000 maps from Karttakeskus and while I waited for them to arrive I planned my route on Google Earth. Job done. Imagine my surprise when the maps arrived a week before departure and I discovered that the forest track that I saw on Google Maps that I had planned to ski along was infact the route of electric pylons. In my defence they looked like a forest track on Google. My next plan was to arrive in Ivalo, camp in a hedge overnight and figure something out in the morning. This plan worked perfectly, apart from the 8 hour gap between flights at Helsinki and accidentally listening to a few seconds of jazz at a bar at the airport. One thing to note about the khazis in Finland is that they use towel hand driers rather than blowers, I amused a number of foreign jonnies by waving my hands around under the drier trying to get it to blow! And thanks to Martti for the offer of a tour of Helsinki between flights, I'll take you up on that one day. After an uneventful flight I walked about 6km from the airport to a place called Ivalo River Camping.
The road from the airport
This is a truckstop/campsite which, though closed for the winter, let me camp in the carpark for €5 (a price that included all the coffee I could drink). I had trouble convincing them that I wanted to camp, they didn't take me seriously initially!
Tent set up in the car park/children's play area.
After pitching my tent and watching the best display of the Northern Lights that I've seen to date I returned to the reception area which also serves as a local bar. It was this display of the lights that gave me the motivation to struggle along with a 28kg pack plus skiis and poles at 10PM after a 20 hour long journey! Anywho I had a few jars with a local guy called Sami who seemed to be a bit concerned about my welfare. In the unlikely event that you ever read this Sami - the 'Mad, Baldy Englishman' got away relatively unscathed, didn't even see a bear let alone have to fight one off! Mad, baldy Englishman, damn, there was the basis of my catchy title right there!
The bar shut at 2am and I retired to my tent. I woke at 5am to find that my sleeping bag was inside out with my bivi bag on the inside. I had placed my sleeping bag in a Rab Survival Lite bivi but Customs had rifled my bag to confiscate a few of my lighters and not re-folded my gear correctly. I take small comfort in the fact that my lighters were stored in my pi55 bottle, hope you washed your hands boys! Regardless of their rearrangement of my kit, I was fairly warm.
Customs confiscation notice
I crawled out of my frosty tent at 8am and noted that the temperature was about -25C, was this a sign of things to come? At least I had clear skies. The temperature inside the tent was about -20C, the locals said that it was -28C outside overnight. The tent is a Rab Latok Ultra single skinned bivi made from Event fabric. The condensation inside was horrific, I once tapped the side of the tent with my head and it started to snow inside as the frozen condensation was disturbed!
Condensation stalagtite in tent
Thermometer showing -20C (honest)
Weather report via smartphone
I broke camp and nipped into the truckstop for coffee and donuts. The staff also supplied me with hot water for my flask. After my sweet and sugary breakfast I carried on up the road on the last 3 or 4 km into Ivalo.
Footpath in daylight
The frozen river and its snowmobile track
The path went on and on...
My first destination in Ivalo was the tourist information office, here I got a list of busses up to Inari and information about the ice quality on lake Inari. I had planned to ski on the lake up to Inari but I was told that there was water on the ice on the south of the lake but that the conditions were good in the north (remember that the lake is 40km x 80km). Before gtting the bus at 1PM I had time to visit a local supermarket. I asked a shop assistant if they sold fuel for a spirit stove, she said she didn't speak much English so she found a friend who did. This friend didn't know what fuel to use so she phoned a friend who said that I needed Marinol. Top marks for customer service. The supermarket also had a post office where I performed my post card sending duties and a little cafe where coffee and reindeer quiche was consumed. The quiche contained onion and while I like onion, onion doesn't like me. It gives my exhaust a burnt, caramalised onion taint. As I was later to find out my dried Mountain House food also contained onion - I stank. I did not like my own brew that week!
Here's my reflection in a window, me and my monster pack.
So after buying fuel (€4 per litre) and troughing at the cafe I strolled up to the bus depot which is a gravel patch in the north of the town. I turned my spot tracker on and surprisingly, it worked through the glass window of the bus (€8.20 single from Ivalo to Inari)
Tracker details for my first day.(1 - 9 = 40km)
The tracker shows my bus trip plus me walking to the local museum of Sami life - Siida. Siida is also the local tourist info office and I spent the rest of the afternoon there looking at the exhibits plus getting details of local B&Bs.
Here's a few pictures from the museum...I particularly like the fish trap
Museum pictures
After my museum visit I decided that I wasn't going to look for a suitable bivi site but wold try to find a local B&B. Opposite the main hotel is a quirky B&B called Villa Lanca, a family owned business that also provide husky and Fjell pony rides. I booked myself in and once inside, repacked my rucksack to make it more suitable for day trips. It now weighed a manageable 18kg or 40lb. I always carried enough gear for an inpromptu emergency camp.
After a continental breakfast the next day I set out to try skiing with a large pack, something I'd not done before!
Skiing on the lake I found a road sign, most unusual by UK standards but quite necessary here.
Sign on the lake
Nothing to see here but snow and trees
I quickly discovered that if I left the prepared ski track or the snowmobile route that I'd be up to my waist in powder snow, I now know why the skiis outside the local hotel were 2.4 metres long and 75mm wide. Mine were 2.05 metres x 60mm.
I skied out to a local peninsular which I circled, some of the tracking data was lost during the return journey as the transmitter turned in my pocket and was no longer facing the sky.
Spot2 data
The museum sell a map of the local trails which proved to be my main navigation aid, this map was also reproduced at many sign posts.
Route map
My trip took me around the penninsula of Pahtaniemi
I used a combination of snowmobile tracks or prepared ski tracks known by nordic skiers as loipe. The alternative was knee - waist deep powder snow.
Snowmobile track
Loipe (skiing track) Excuse the wonky horizon!
It is worth mentioning that the surface of the lake is not at all flat, there are many ridges where the covering snow has blown and formed snowdrifts.
A typical view
The lake is used by a local company(ies) for snowmobile trips, there was often an annoying smell of 2-stroke petrol which tended to linger as there were still-air conditions for the duration of my trip.
Snowmobile
I cooked my lunch on the lake, it was pasta with lasagne sauce. Stove is an Evernew spirit stove with 800ml pot, my only cookware.
Lunch on the lake
The dried 'cook-in-the-bag' meals which I used throughout the trip required @550ml of boiling water and an 8 minute soak time. To reduce heat loss during the 8 mins I insulated the meals with a bubblewrap foil pouch. This worked well even in temperatures of -25C. The drinking vessel is an insulated 360ml thermos cup by Aladdin, brilliant piece of kit. I like the sippy lid.
Insulation pouch
Temperature was -15C today, fairly typical of the 12 days I was there.
Silva Windwatch
The view on the lake gets tedious after a while...
Sidestepping to get up a hill on the lake, who'da thunk it!
I stopped for a brew half way round. I was carrying a litre of near boiling water and reheated it before brewing up - standards must be maintained. To stay warm whilst stationary I placed my Rab Jannu jacket over my outer layer. For longer stops I like to remove my sweat soaked thermals and put on dry clobber. No matter how effective your big 'mothership jacket' is you won't be truly warm if you're still wearing sweaty undergarments. But for short stops overlayering is OK.
Rab Jannu 'mothership jacket'
Despite wearing thin thermals under my smock I managed to overheat and yet get ice forming on the inside of my smock!
Ice in Aspira smock.
BTW all I wore whilst skiing was Paramo Aspira sallopettes and smock, Sub Zero polymide tops and 200g Woolpower longjohns. Boots were Lundhags Huski with a thin/thick sock combo.
For the return journey I decided to go 'off piste'. This was a mistake but provided a useful lesson. I was, at times, sinking to my knees in snow. Dragging skiis out of powder snow is a real pain. Below is a shot of the trail I made, nowhere near as neat as the prepared trails shown earlier.
Going 'off-piste'
The going was hard work even though the distances were short. I noticed from the colour of my urine that I was dehydrated so I stopped to rehydrate with some British Army Marching Powder (glucose drink).
B.A.M.P.
Suitably rejuvenated I carried on past a maritime navigation aid (at tracker point 26 shown above).
Nav Aid
From this point onwards I found another snowmobile track and used it to head back to the village. Once back on firmer snow I could stop watchng my skiis and start to concentrate on the views around me. I noticed that whilst the forests are sparsely populated, everyone seems to have a holiday home on the edge of the lake, many only accessible by boat or snowmobile.
Typical lakeside view
So back the village and time for tea. I went to the local minimarket looking for food. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that a simple steak pie was not a stock item, infact they had no pies at all! I had to make do with crisps, nuts and salty liquorice sweets.
That pretty much concludes the first 3 days other than the perfect display of the Northern Lights, not the green version but the rare red kind. I was in bed asleep at the time!
To finish days 1 - 3, what are these tracks seen earlier on the lake?
Animal tracks
The Finnish have an excellent website dedicated to their natural attractions and it was on this website that I chanced upon a section dedicated to the Inari Hiking Area. Inari is about 40km north of Ivalo airport to which there are about 3 flights per day via Helsinki. Getting to Ivalo was the easy part, getting up to Inari was not quite so easy to plan via the Internet. Rather than try to decipher Finnish bus timetables I decided to walk/ski instead, after all it's only 40km. I ordered 1/50,000 maps from Karttakeskus and while I waited for them to arrive I planned my route on Google Earth. Job done. Imagine my surprise when the maps arrived a week before departure and I discovered that the forest track that I saw on Google Maps that I had planned to ski along was infact the route of electric pylons. In my defence they looked like a forest track on Google. My next plan was to arrive in Ivalo, camp in a hedge overnight and figure something out in the morning. This plan worked perfectly, apart from the 8 hour gap between flights at Helsinki and accidentally listening to a few seconds of jazz at a bar at the airport. One thing to note about the khazis in Finland is that they use towel hand driers rather than blowers, I amused a number of foreign jonnies by waving my hands around under the drier trying to get it to blow! And thanks to Martti for the offer of a tour of Helsinki between flights, I'll take you up on that one day. After an uneventful flight I walked about 6km from the airport to a place called Ivalo River Camping.
The road from the airport
This is a truckstop/campsite which, though closed for the winter, let me camp in the carpark for €5 (a price that included all the coffee I could drink). I had trouble convincing them that I wanted to camp, they didn't take me seriously initially!
Tent set up in the car park/children's play area.
After pitching my tent and watching the best display of the Northern Lights that I've seen to date I returned to the reception area which also serves as a local bar. It was this display of the lights that gave me the motivation to struggle along with a 28kg pack plus skiis and poles at 10PM after a 20 hour long journey! Anywho I had a few jars with a local guy called Sami who seemed to be a bit concerned about my welfare. In the unlikely event that you ever read this Sami - the 'Mad, Baldy Englishman' got away relatively unscathed, didn't even see a bear let alone have to fight one off! Mad, baldy Englishman, damn, there was the basis of my catchy title right there!
The bar shut at 2am and I retired to my tent. I woke at 5am to find that my sleeping bag was inside out with my bivi bag on the inside. I had placed my sleeping bag in a Rab Survival Lite bivi but Customs had rifled my bag to confiscate a few of my lighters and not re-folded my gear correctly. I take small comfort in the fact that my lighters were stored in my pi55 bottle, hope you washed your hands boys! Regardless of their rearrangement of my kit, I was fairly warm.
Customs confiscation notice
I crawled out of my frosty tent at 8am and noted that the temperature was about -25C, was this a sign of things to come? At least I had clear skies. The temperature inside the tent was about -20C, the locals said that it was -28C outside overnight. The tent is a Rab Latok Ultra single skinned bivi made from Event fabric. The condensation inside was horrific, I once tapped the side of the tent with my head and it started to snow inside as the frozen condensation was disturbed!
Condensation stalagtite in tent
Thermometer showing -20C (honest)
Weather report via smartphone
I broke camp and nipped into the truckstop for coffee and donuts. The staff also supplied me with hot water for my flask. After my sweet and sugary breakfast I carried on up the road on the last 3 or 4 km into Ivalo.
Footpath in daylight
The frozen river and its snowmobile track
The path went on and on...
My first destination in Ivalo was the tourist information office, here I got a list of busses up to Inari and information about the ice quality on lake Inari. I had planned to ski on the lake up to Inari but I was told that there was water on the ice on the south of the lake but that the conditions were good in the north (remember that the lake is 40km x 80km). Before gtting the bus at 1PM I had time to visit a local supermarket. I asked a shop assistant if they sold fuel for a spirit stove, she said she didn't speak much English so she found a friend who did. This friend didn't know what fuel to use so she phoned a friend who said that I needed Marinol. Top marks for customer service. The supermarket also had a post office where I performed my post card sending duties and a little cafe where coffee and reindeer quiche was consumed. The quiche contained onion and while I like onion, onion doesn't like me. It gives my exhaust a burnt, caramalised onion taint. As I was later to find out my dried Mountain House food also contained onion - I stank. I did not like my own brew that week!
Here's my reflection in a window, me and my monster pack.
So after buying fuel (€4 per litre) and troughing at the cafe I strolled up to the bus depot which is a gravel patch in the north of the town. I turned my spot tracker on and surprisingly, it worked through the glass window of the bus (€8.20 single from Ivalo to Inari)
Tracker details for my first day.(1 - 9 = 40km)
The tracker shows my bus trip plus me walking to the local museum of Sami life - Siida. Siida is also the local tourist info office and I spent the rest of the afternoon there looking at the exhibits plus getting details of local B&Bs.
Here's a few pictures from the museum...I particularly like the fish trap
Museum pictures
After my museum visit I decided that I wasn't going to look for a suitable bivi site but wold try to find a local B&B. Opposite the main hotel is a quirky B&B called Villa Lanca, a family owned business that also provide husky and Fjell pony rides. I booked myself in and once inside, repacked my rucksack to make it more suitable for day trips. It now weighed a manageable 18kg or 40lb. I always carried enough gear for an inpromptu emergency camp.
After a continental breakfast the next day I set out to try skiing with a large pack, something I'd not done before!
Skiing on the lake I found a road sign, most unusual by UK standards but quite necessary here.
Sign on the lake
Nothing to see here but snow and trees
I quickly discovered that if I left the prepared ski track or the snowmobile route that I'd be up to my waist in powder snow, I now know why the skiis outside the local hotel were 2.4 metres long and 75mm wide. Mine were 2.05 metres x 60mm.
I skied out to a local peninsular which I circled, some of the tracking data was lost during the return journey as the transmitter turned in my pocket and was no longer facing the sky.
Spot2 data
The museum sell a map of the local trails which proved to be my main navigation aid, this map was also reproduced at many sign posts.
Route map
My trip took me around the penninsula of Pahtaniemi
I used a combination of snowmobile tracks or prepared ski tracks known by nordic skiers as loipe. The alternative was knee - waist deep powder snow.
Snowmobile track
Loipe (skiing track) Excuse the wonky horizon!
It is worth mentioning that the surface of the lake is not at all flat, there are many ridges where the covering snow has blown and formed snowdrifts.
A typical view
The lake is used by a local company(ies) for snowmobile trips, there was often an annoying smell of 2-stroke petrol which tended to linger as there were still-air conditions for the duration of my trip.
Snowmobile
I cooked my lunch on the lake, it was pasta with lasagne sauce. Stove is an Evernew spirit stove with 800ml pot, my only cookware.
Lunch on the lake
The dried 'cook-in-the-bag' meals which I used throughout the trip required @550ml of boiling water and an 8 minute soak time. To reduce heat loss during the 8 mins I insulated the meals with a bubblewrap foil pouch. This worked well even in temperatures of -25C. The drinking vessel is an insulated 360ml thermos cup by Aladdin, brilliant piece of kit. I like the sippy lid.
Insulation pouch
Temperature was -15C today, fairly typical of the 12 days I was there.
Silva Windwatch
The view on the lake gets tedious after a while...
Sidestepping to get up a hill on the lake, who'da thunk it!
I stopped for a brew half way round. I was carrying a litre of near boiling water and reheated it before brewing up - standards must be maintained. To stay warm whilst stationary I placed my Rab Jannu jacket over my outer layer. For longer stops I like to remove my sweat soaked thermals and put on dry clobber. No matter how effective your big 'mothership jacket' is you won't be truly warm if you're still wearing sweaty undergarments. But for short stops overlayering is OK.
Rab Jannu 'mothership jacket'
Despite wearing thin thermals under my smock I managed to overheat and yet get ice forming on the inside of my smock!
Ice in Aspira smock.
BTW all I wore whilst skiing was Paramo Aspira sallopettes and smock, Sub Zero polymide tops and 200g Woolpower longjohns. Boots were Lundhags Huski with a thin/thick sock combo.
For the return journey I decided to go 'off piste'. This was a mistake but provided a useful lesson. I was, at times, sinking to my knees in snow. Dragging skiis out of powder snow is a real pain. Below is a shot of the trail I made, nowhere near as neat as the prepared trails shown earlier.
Going 'off-piste'
The going was hard work even though the distances were short. I noticed from the colour of my urine that I was dehydrated so I stopped to rehydrate with some British Army Marching Powder (glucose drink).
B.A.M.P.
Suitably rejuvenated I carried on past a maritime navigation aid (at tracker point 26 shown above).
Nav Aid
From this point onwards I found another snowmobile track and used it to head back to the village. Once back on firmer snow I could stop watchng my skiis and start to concentrate on the views around me. I noticed that whilst the forests are sparsely populated, everyone seems to have a holiday home on the edge of the lake, many only accessible by boat or snowmobile.
Typical lakeside view
So back the village and time for tea. I went to the local minimarket looking for food. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that a simple steak pie was not a stock item, infact they had no pies at all! I had to make do with crisps, nuts and salty liquorice sweets.
That pretty much concludes the first 3 days other than the perfect display of the Northern Lights, not the green version but the rare red kind. I was in bed asleep at the time!
To finish days 1 - 3, what are these tracks seen earlier on the lake?
Animal tracks
Last edited:
). I used the time to sort my kit out and reduce my pack weight to about 40lb. The excess kit (mostly food) would be stored at the B&B. Substinance for the evening was provided by a blue cheese, kebab meat, onion and pepper calzone pizza.
I'm glad I wrap mine in gaffer tape and take them in the flask.
