We made an earlier start than normal this morning, leaving the house around 09.20. When we did we found that it was a bit warmer than yesterday, but snowing
We carried our snowshoes into the centre of Saariselkä, from where we planned to catch the local ski bus to a place called Kiilopää. We visited Kiilopää for the first time last January and had an amazing time snowshoeing there. You have to be very precise with timings, because there is only one ski bus per day which stops there; departing Saariselkä at 09.45 in the morning and departing Kiilopää again at 16.45 in the evening.
We actually ended up getting on the wrong bus today because - just by coincidence - a bus from the airport which was also going to Kiilopää arrived at our bus stop a couple of minutes before we were expecting the ski bus. We ended up paying slightly more for a ticket on that bus than we would have done on the ski bus, but never mind. It is very poorly captured in the photo below (look in the bottom right of the windscreen) but as the bus made its way towards Kiilopää we encountered reindeer in the road
We arrived in Kiilopää not long after 10am and made our way to the national park entrance, where we strapped on our snowshoes.
There are various trails which you can do here but we'd decided to do one called "Poropolku", which we think means "reindeer trail" and is the route which we took last year. As you can see from the sign, it's a 5.4km circular route.
Off we went!
When we were here last year it was quite a sunny day. With the snowy weather today, the light was completely different and so all my photos came out looking slightly blue.
The walk gets off to a gentle start as you make your way through a landscape of small trees.
Then you come to a point where you have to cross a bridge over a frozen stream.
The water was indeed very frozen today.
Shortly after that you reach the reindeer fence.
Although it might not look like it at first glance, this is a gate in the fence. You have to move some of the poles to one side...
...in order to climb over.
Most importantly, you then have to put all the poles back so that the reindeer don't escape!
On the far side of the fence, the trail starts to lead a little bit uphill.
We passed lots of snowy trees...
...and soon we had a view back towards Kiilopää fell which is the highest hill around here.
We made it to the top of the smaller hill we were climbing, which was surprisingly icy on the top.
From here we could see forests stretching out for miles into the distance.
We got slightly lost at this point on the walk last year, but this year we knew where we were going.
We began our descent downhill, following the line of small poles which mark the route.
As we walked we had another scenic view towards the Kiilopää fell. You'll see on the lefthand side of the photo below that you can just make out the reindeer fence going up the side of the hill. Hold that thought.
It was a beautiful landscape to snowshoe through and this part of the trail was pretty easy.
We passed lots of cute little trees which were barely as tall as us.
Before we knew it we were crossing through the reindeer gate again...
...and we were almost back at the bus stop.
It wasn't quite midday by this point, the bus back to Saariselkä wasn't until 16.45 and the Poropolku trail had felt loads easier than it did last year, so we decided that we had both the time and energy to try a second route. You can see the route map in the picture below. The walk we'd just done is the one marked in green. We decided to walk along a short trail marked in white in order to get onto the bright pink trail, which was a similar length to the Poropolku route.
The white trail was very pleasant. We passed a fallen tree...
...and found a buried bench which would have been rather difficult to sit on
Before too long we found the start of the pink trail, called the Kiirunapolku, which followed the same route initially as the Poropolku trail.
We walked through the forest until we got to the point where, on the Poropolku route, we'd crossed the bridge over the frozen stream. The Kiirunapolku led us in the opposite direction here.
Rather than passing through the reindeer fence, we found ourselves walking alongside it.
Specifically, we found ourselves climbing uphill alongside it.
What I hadn't realised from looking at the route map was that this pink trail was going to lead us up along the reindeer fence we'd seen in the distance earlier and to the very top of the Kiilopää fell.
I can imagine this is a lovely walk in slightly warmer weather, but today it was an absolutely freezing climb. A biting wind was blowing snow into us as we made our way up.
The trail is named after "kiiruna", arctic birds which I think in English we would call ptarmigan. Partway up, when we paused to catch our breath, we realised we could actually see three of them in the distance (They're quite well camouflaged!)
Eventually the path turned away from the reindeer fence slightly and we were out of the worst of the wind.
It felt like we were in the middle of nowhere up here... and we still weren't at the top!
As you can see, it was rather chilly - Tim's beard was now completely frozen.
And I was feeling rather frozen too.
The saving grace was that it wasn't possible to get lost. There were periodic info boards telling us which way we ought to be going...
...and it was impossible to go too far wrong so long as you kept following the marker poles.
There was still a decent amount of uphill to go!
Having looked it up, I now know that Kiilopää fell is 546m high.
Eventually we made it up!
The top of the fell was flat and icy.
We could see for miles in all directions...
...and I thought it was particularly cool when I realised we could see the main road cutting through the forest.
We were very pleased to have made it to the top
There was, of course, still the small matter of getting down again, which involved following a different part of the reindeer fence. I didn't take pictures on the way down because it was very steep and the snow was frozen hard, which meant that I had to concentrate on digging my snowshoes in with every step. You should just be able to make out the slope of the fence in this pic.
Finally, we'd made it to the bottom and survived the Kiirunapolku, learning the lesson in the process that just because two trails are both marked as being 5.6km, it doesn't mean that they are equal in terms of difficulty
In fact, when we walked back to the national park entrance and read the trail descriptions, we found that the Poropolku trail was graded as "easy", while the Kiirunapolku was graded as "moderate". It was also described as being "suitable for novice hikers". If that was a moderate trail, I don't fancy doing a hard one
We still had a couple of hours until the ski bus departed, which we spent in the Kiilopää restaurant where we warmed up with coffee and cake. Today has been a rather adventurous end to what's been a fantastic week in Lapland; not just plenty of snowy walks, but seeing the northern lights twice! While tomorrow will be a long day of travel, with our first flight leaving Ivalo at 09.10, it has definitely been worth it
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