Korpijaakko

– my personal views on all walks of outdoor life

Tag Archives: auroras

The best winter yet? Starting from Sarek.

1 Comment Posted by on 30/04/2015

The blog has been quiet since my contemplations of saying farewell to winter.

The reason is, that I succeeded and found the winter. And definitely didn’t have to say good byes in February. At the end of February I headed to Sarek in Northern Sweden and found beautiful winter on the fjells. No signs of the wet misery of last year but simply great late-winter conditions.

After Sarek I got a taste of wet winter on an overnight expedition training trip at Southern Konnevesi National Park and as I didn’t want to let go of the winter quite yet, I soon headed to Svalbard for a three-week expedition. As the pile of photos from the Svalbard expedition is still a mess of raw files, I’ll just settle into saying: It. Was. Awesome.

Well, there is one photo, so I’ll include it here as a teaser.

15-04-15EOS 6D1180_900But Sarek was awesome too, and the photos from Sarek are ready so lets get back there…

The first tour we started from STF station at Ritsem. We got a firm welcome from Nordic nature crossing the lake Ahkka: heavy winds with drifting snow. But starting from the second day it all got better. A lot better.

We were mostly blessed with bluebird skies and light winds. Temperatures dropped occasionally well below -20°C but mostly it was quite warm to be early March. In addition, one night we were blessed with short but spectacular auroras! We also saw quite a lot of wild life with the highlight, for me, being a wild wolf! We saw plenty of wolf tracks and on the lunch break of the fifth day spotted a black silhouette moving in the distance and later confirmed from the track that it was the wolf we had been skiing with!

Thanks to the good conditions we managed to ski “the long tour” as planned and clocked a bit over 120 kilometers in the seven days dispite a pretty serious burn on one participant caused by spilling a litre of boiling water on his thigh. It looked really bad, but he was a seriously tough guy and soldiered through the remaining three days of skiing without any issues.More photos from the trip in my gallery.

After a recovery day at Levi, it was time to go back with another group. Meanwhile Tero from the first tour had braved the winter storms solo and joined us for another tour.

The second tour started in spectacular weather but on the third day and the fifth night we got hit by a nice storm, not too bad, but enough to say it was a storm. In between the weather was again great, colder at times but mostly pretty warm. In the end we blasted over 5 kilometers in an hours (with pulkas!) and enjoyed coffee and refreshments at a pop-up coffee on lake Ahkka.

More photos also from the trip in my gallery.

Thanks for the great groups for the great tours! It was awesome.

For me the winter will still continue for a while as soon I’ll be heading to Iceland to once again cross the Vatnajökull glacier. I sure hope I haven’t burned all my good weather karma quite yet as the weather is Iceland can be horrible. I wouldn’t mind the spell of good luck continuing for a few more weeks. Or a few more years…

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Microadventure with Northern Lights

6 Comments Posted by on 15/10/2013

I’ve heard that routine is deadly so this time, I didn’t go for an overnighter. I went for one these very fashionable microadventures as this time my trip meet the five-to-nine and other criteria. Or it could’ve been a Browernighter as well… But it doesn’t really matter. The important thing is just to get out!

A friend of mine, visited me on Sunday evening to borrow an electronic blinking and beeping super high-tech torque wrench for attaching some accessories to my bike and we decided to go for an overnighter. And soon a plan emerged: leave Monday evening, cycle to nearby lean-to shelter for fire, food, beer and so on and get back home to catch work on Tuesday morning.

I managed to pack everything on the bike and could ride without a backpack! Maybe not big news for established bikepackers with special kit but I only had straps and roll-top bags (and a 9,90 euros beam rack to help). And maybe not big news for UL enthusiasts but I had my winter sleeping bag, three beers, bag of buns, a family size bottle of bbq sauce and so on… I thought all of it was very essential, unlike the Gorillapod I left at home.

Riding was quite chilly but good on the dirt roads in the moon light, and with little help from my new improvised bikelight (Fenix HP10 headlamp strapped to the bike with some p-cord). The ride took only about an hour so I should really do this more often…

At the lean-to we chopped the one-meter logs to smaller pieces, hard work which warmed us a lot more than the fire meters away from the lean-to, as it often is on established shelters…

Sausages were grilled, beers were enjoyed and muffins (this time from a local bakery) with minttu-kaakao followed. The beer of the trip was Founders’ All Day IPA which I saw Mark, the father of Browernighters, mentioning in one of his tweets so I had to give it a try. It comes in lightweight bikepacking-friendly glass bottles (pack inside woollen socks and stuff bottles in the middle of you sleeping bag and fear for the worst…) I also had to drink the beer straight from the bottle as I saved some weight by leaving my cup at home… But it was still very good: crisp and light with hoppy and bitter (in a good way) aftertaste. Recommended, but maybe not for bikepacking on bumpy trails.

Later in the evening I was on the platform trying some moonlit long-exposure shots with the little Canon S90 I had for this trip when I noticed something weird in the horizon…

And yes! Sometimes you don’t have to go all the way to the North to get lucky. Auroras on the sky in South-East Finland!

The light show was quite short, maybe 10-15 minutes but quite intense and lively for one this fas South. It was mostly grey and green but the lights moved vividly and occasionally pillars rose all the way to the zenith. I was, once gain, quite sorry for not bringing a tripod. And also little sorry for not having my EOS 550D. But happy that I had something more appropriate than the camera-mimicking function of my phone.

After the light show it was time to hit the sack. My bag was very warm which was welcome after the long and quite chilly evening. It also helped to balance the lack of full length sleeping pad, although the cushioning on biking shorts also works as a micro-pad under your heels during the night…

In the morning the friend of mine had to bolt to the work and I enjoyed the grey morning with more relaxed pace having breakfast and coffee before heading back home. I checked a couple of pieces of local history (a re-built wooden chute used back in the days to float logs from lake to another, and piece of anti-tank obstacle of the Salpa Line). It was a grey morning but riding was nice as I could choose the smaller and more bumpy trails now that I didn’t have to fear for my beers and sleeping bag.

The autumn is coming to the end again. It’s still lingering there in the form of thick carpets of dry leaves on the trail and in the silhouettes of bright yellow maples but winter… Winter is coming. But I hope to squeeze in few more of these little overnighter before I get on the skis again.

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Auroras, snow shelters and husky tours

7 Comments Posted by on 18/03/2013

The blog has been little quiet, as has unfortunately been the way this winter. So, what have I been up to?

Mostly I’ve been busy guiding husky tours ranging from full-day safaris to over-night tours but there have also been other things…

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On the tours we spend the nights at huts but being out in the wild gives a good excuse to sleep outside and this week I decided to sleep in a quinzee as the night was expected to be a cold one. (The record low for this winter was recorded at Taivalkoski at the same week, -38,2C.) I was a little hasty building the quinzee and made the pile little too small and decided to go without the sticks to mark the wall thickness. The end product was livable but little too short with too big doorway and I had to patch one hole in a wall. But it still added apparently quite a lot of warmth as I managed to sleep most of the night comfortably in my sleeping bag rated to -18C (Tlim) and only woke up chilled a few times after 6.00 a.m. The cabin doesn’t have a thermometer but it’s in a cold place on low-lands next to big marsh so the temperature was likely colder than at the village of Taivalkoski… Snow shelters make sense! And there is still time to make some so don’t miss the chance!

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The little free time I’ve had, I’ve used for arranging the guided ski tours. The last week I was guiding a group in Sarek (along the route mapped on Social Hiking, though the distance listed there is little optimistic). We also made snow shelters in Sarek as a training and they were not bad choise as the night was cold. Snow caves are especially nice shelters if you happen to find pile enough pile of hard snow. It was an awesome tour with good group and well worth sitting in the car for 21 hours – each way.

Sarek. There’s a feeling of real wilderness. And beatiful mountains as well!

I’ll write a separate post about the tour in Sarek later as this post is about northern lights! As the winter has been unusually cloudy there hasn’t been much auroras to be seen at Taivalkoski. I saw a good show here on early December, little faint lights every now and then here and at lake Inari and nice but little grey light show at Sarek. But this evening was different. After several cold and cold nights without a trace of the northern lights the lights at the sky were on a big time! Here are some photos of the showon Sunday evening. Hope you enjoy the photos in case you missed the show!

For those interested in the techy stuff all photos taken with my trusty Canon 550D (with a battery grip with dual battery for the cold), the cheap but stellar Samyang 14mm 2,8 lens and of course utilizing a tripod (a heavy Manfrotto 055). The only problem with this setup is the Samyang lens being fully manual, which shouldn’t be much of a problem but the markings on the focus ring are all totally wrong andgetting it focused in the dark is not too easy. I think I should make some new marking on it…

On the weekend we also had the pre-expedition meeting with the Vantajökull 2013 expedition and I can’t wait to get on the ice for with the group as it’s likely to be a great little expedition… But before that I still have some weeks of husky safari guiding to be done, including two nice longer tours. I’ll try to get some nice photos to share from the tours.

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Photos from the winter wonderland

3 Comments Posted by on 21/01/2013

The regular readers probably know that for most of this winter season I’m working at Husky Center Kolmiloukko at Taivalkoski (a small town in North-East Finland) guiding husky safaris.

I’ve been lately quite busy with the huskies and guiding because I’m also putting together my own ski expedition courses and tours and actually spent the last weekend at lake Inari training winter skills with two ultra-runners. It turned out to be a superb trip but more of it later… Despite being busy I’ve had some time to take photos on the way and here are some shots from the winter wonderland here at Taivalkoski. Photos from the Inari are to follow later…

Here are some photos from a full-day husky safari in early January. The customers were great (as they usually are) and we saw the sun for the first time for over a week or so.

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The guide’s job here includes also quite a lot of driving with snowmobile – and waiting as N is doing in the photo…

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In addition to the 60 adult dogs, we have also some of these cute fellows as well. The big one, named “Nuoska” (meaning wet sticky snow), is probably the biggest husky puppy of her age I’ve ever seen and if she’ll continue to grow like that she’ll be around the size of a horse in the end… 😀

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As mentioned the work involves also waiting but luckily our dogs are masters in the waiting game. Here the dogs are waiting for customers to arrive for a full-day safari in mid January on a particularly cold day with temps below -30C. The upside with the cold weather is that here it goes hand in hand with clear skies and sunny weather.

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And this is how the cold here looks like…

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On my free time I try to go out skiing as often as possible. The views are often nice, like the dusk in the photo below taken while on a skiing trip at the close-by swamp plains.

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As we haven’t seen much auroras here lately, here’s one of the nice northern lights we saw in early December. The skies are clear tonight so I keep my fingers crossed for more fresh photos of the fire on the sky…

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For those interested: All photos are taken with Canon EOS 550D and most of them with the magnificent EF 24-105 4 L IS. Equipped with an external battery grip it works just fine below -30C temps and can be used also with thick mitts. Just remember not the breath towards the viewfinder or lens. 😉

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The winter is here!

5 Comments Posted by on 14/11/2012

…or to be precise, I traveled where the winter is. But anyway, me and good ‘ol winter are again in the same place and I’m enjoying it a lot! I was actually so excited that I wanted to share a few words and photos with you.

Liking the winter after a 10km training run with the dogs.

There was a little snow in South-East Finland earlier but not a real winter and apparently at the moment there isn’t any snow left and temperatures are closer to +10C instead of freezing. As I’m on the way to North to work I decided to spend some time on a “working holiday” at Taivalkoski in the Husky Center Kolmiloukko where I was working the last Christmas season.

I’ve been mostly helping training and conditioning the dogs i.e. riding sleds which is great fun. I feels so awesome to pass effortlessly and quietly through snow-covered landscape. There isn’t that much snow yet, maybe some 15-20cm, so it’s a bit bumby ride but still fun. I highly recommend giving dog sledding a try.

In addition I did the first skiing trip of the year (have to be in shape for guiding trips) and have been actually also working a bit with the shovel preparing the tracks…

Another awesome thing was that last night there were magnificent Northern lights! I saw a faint greyish light at the horizon while skiing in the late afternoon (it’s dark here around 16 pm and sun rises around 9 am) and later in the evening it turned into a real light show.

Judging by the last few days living and working in Lapland for the winter doesn’t feel too bad, though I’m quite sure my moods will swing a bit when shoveling snowmobiles from the drifts… 😉

Because of not having a permanent place to stay at the moment the blog might be silent for a while. At the mean time, I’d advice you to enjoy the outdoors! 🙂

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