Day 7: Saariselkä

When we left the cabin this morning, it felt noticeably colder than it has for the past two days. The thermometer outside suggested that it was about minus 18.

The good news was that the sky seemed to have cleared and it didn't look anywhere near as cloudy as it had yesterday.

Our plan for this morning was to rent snowshoes. We went to the office of the company that we normally use, but found that they weren't opening until 11.30 today for some reason. It was only about 10am by this point so that was unfortunate; we didn't want to miss half the daylight by standing outside waiting! We ended up walking around the village trying a couple of different places, until on our third attempt we found somewhere we could rent them from. Phew.

Snowshoes obtained, we set off to the national park where we were going to complete part of a route called Iisakkipää. There were some lovely sunrise colours in the sky as we set off.

The route starts by following the beginning of the Aurorapolku trail which we completed earlier in the week.

At the point at which the path reaches the edge of a little gorge, the Iisakkipää route branches off.

In summer, this gorge is really rocky.

The trail follows along the edge of the gorge for a while.

Then it comes to a really steep slope, which I never enjoy trying to navigate my way down.

Here's Tim climbing back up to show how steep it is.

In summer there is a series of little steps to help you climb down.

Once you've successfully navigated that slope the path becomes a bit easier, leading through the woods.

We passed a rather concerning hole in the snow!

Then we snowshoed through a pretty little valley.

In summer there's a little stream here.

The colours in the sky were beautiful as we continued to walk.

As we climbed higher and the sun got stronger, they became even brighter.

I may have taken just a few photos!

It was really nice to see a blue sky too after all the whiteness of the past few days.

At one point when I'd stopped to photograph a tree, I caught sight of something moving.

It turned out to be a ptarmigan, very well camouflaged against the snow.

Unfortunately Tim was too far ahead for me to shout him to come back!

Never mind, I snapped a couple of pictures and continued on my way.

It is difficult to take pictures when you're snowshoeing, especially when it's as cold as it was today. You have to stop, disentangle your hands from your pole straps and then take a glove off.

I kept seeing things I wanted to photograph, though

The path continued to climb higher.

We walked past all these tiny little trees, buried in the snow.

It was around midday by this point, so the sunrise was about to turn into sunset.

Eventually we caught sight of a big fell in the distance.

At this point the small path comes to an end and you have to walk on a ski run for a short distance.

Luckily there didn't seem to be any skiers out and about here today.

Eventually you get to a point where the ski run becomes just a ski run and there's a sign telling you not to walk any further.

In summer this part is a normal hiking trail and I walked along it on my way to the Rumakuru gorge. Look how different it is without the snow!! The two photos are pretty much taken from the exact same place, so I can even identify individual trees between the two pics. The summer hiking trail is a lot narrower than the winter ski run.

The winter hiking route turns off to the left here and loops back to Saariselkä. We always opt out of that part of the loop and retrace our steps back the way we came, because the other half of the loop involves a very steep slope.

In summer, you can see that this signpost is a lot higher off the ground than it looked with all the snow today.

Here's me with the sign in summer...

...and here's me with the sign today.

As you can see, it really was cold today!

My hair had completely frozen!

Tim's beard had frozen too!

It was fun taking photos, but in this cold we didn't want to linger longer than necessary. We turned around and set off down the ski track again.

The trail was just as scenic on the way back.

The sky was getting mistier in the distance though and the sunset wasn't as visible as the sunrise had been.

By the time we were got back to the national park entrance, Tim's entire ponytail was turning white!

I thought that was it for the day's excitement, but later this evening I got a notification that the northern lights were visible outside.

I didn't think we'd see them again with all the cloud we've had over the past few days, so this was really exciting.

There seemed to be a lot of light pollution this evening, so it was a struggle to capture them in photos at times.

It was a really amazing display though.

We even saw the purple lights again! They appear really suddenly, dance in the sky and then disappear.

Definitely worth coming outside for, even if it was incredibly cold.

By the time we'd finished taking pictures, our fingers needed a bit of warming up!

It was a great end to what has been a really fun day