Day 5: Kaunispää

I woke up this morning to the sound of thunder There was a very loud storm taking place around 8am and the rain was torrential; like it had been when I arrived in Ivalo on Saturday evening. I checked the weather forecast and it looked like things were due to clear up by 9ish, then stay dry until mid-afternoon when the storms would start up again.

The forecast turned out to be pretty accurate. By the time I'd had breakfast the rain had stopped. I stepped out of the front door and met my first reindeer of the day.

As I walked through the village to the national park, the sky was starting to look blue again.

My plan for today was to walk up the Kaunispää fell, which Tim and I often climb in winter. The route we take in winter is a special winter hiking trail and today I was going to be approaching it from a different direction, following a path that starts at the national park entrance.

It was quite a wide gravel path; in winter it is a cross country ski run and in summer it is (unfortunately!) also a mountain-biking route.

There were a handful of sights marked on the map along the trail. The first of these - after a few hundred metres - was the so-called "Ghost Hut". There was a sign on the wall trying to explain some sort of local ghost story - it seemed to be to do with the ghost of a bear - but it didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Presumably it made sense in Finnish!

I walked past a lake...

...and then the path passed the Saariselkä ski centre.

There was some sort of construction work going on here and so the path was temporarily diverted, with a not very well signposted diversion. I was optimistically following a Finnish couple hiking in front of me on the assumption that they knew where they were going; it turned out they didn't! But eventually we all figured it out.

Back on the correct route, you could see that it had been raining heavily this morning.

The path was nice and flat to start with, following alongside a stream.

Eventually it began to climb up into the forest a bit more...

...and soon I could just glimpse the stream down below.

From here onwards there was quite a bit of up and down involved, crossing over various small rivers and streams.

Award for worst bridge of the day goes to this one!

By this point I'd walked quite a way from Saariselkä. The thermometer at this signpost was showing quite a high temperature by Lapland standards.

The path continued through the forest...

...until it reached the Palo-oja hut. This one is apparently built like a traditional Lappish hut.

I didn't find the communal axe, but there had definitely been some wood-chopping and a camp fire going on recently.

After the hut, the path began to climb upwards towards the top of Kaunispää.

It was quite a gentle climb, but eventually the trees began to become a bit sparser...

...and I could imagine what these ones might look like covered by snow in winter.

Eventually I could see the top of Kaunispää coming into view. There's some sort of weather station at the top, which I think is what the weird white tower is.

Now that I'd got this high and out of the treeline, the views of the surrounding countryside were amazing.

So strange to see it all looking this green, though!

At the top of the hill there is a ski lift, which is always busy in winter.

There's also this triangulation tower, which you can climb to the top of.

I admired the views from the bottom first...

...then climbed to the top.

Behind me in the photo below, you might just be able to make out a herd of reindeer (on the left) and the markings for the snowmobile route up the hill (on the right).

I could also see the restaurant...

...which looked so different to how it does in winter!

To be fair, the tower itself looks pretty different in summer...

...compared to how it does in winter too.

It's always looked too icy to climb in winter (though I have seen people try it!) so I was excited to be on the top today.

I admired the reindeer herd for a while...

...then went to get a selfie with the Saariselkä sign. Unfortunately, selfies are inverted so it's not the best

Obviously, it should look like this

Again, a bit of a contrast to winter!

I had a coffee and a doughnut in the restaurant, but didn't want to linger for too long. Although it still looked like a beautiful sunny day, my weather app was still forecasting more thunderstorms to come.

For the trip down I'd be taking the path which Tim and I normally climb in winter.

The view down normally looks more like this!

Without the snow I could see that it actually is quite a steep path in places. There was one year where the snow was too deep for us to make it all the way up this final slope.

After a while I got back down to the forest.

At this point the summer route seemed to deviate from the winter route, with the signposts to Saariselkä taking me down what I think must be an illuminated ski run in winter.

Soon I was back in the village, walking past Santa's deserted office.

It still looked like a beautiful sunny day when I got back to the apartment, so I was starting to wonder whether I could have stayed longer on the top.