Day 4, Rakitsanoja - Vieriharju

This is written two days after the actual date. The weather and how exhausting the tour actually was made it pretty much impossible to write down day to day events.

I woke up around midnight to the sound of pots and pans and the noise of a person from our group going to her shelter and then out again. I almost asked from my tent how come you are starting to cook at midnight!? You can't seriously be hungry again?

In the morning I crawled out of my tent and saw that my pot, spoon and fuel canister had been thrown around the snow field. I asked my neighbour if she stumble into them during the night? She said she didn't think so as she had actually slept in the wilderness cabin and not in her shelter. But I had heard someone...or something going into her shelter during the night...

A bit of investigation revealed fox footprints around our camp! It had been a fox that had thrown my pot around. Also the fox had entered my neighbour's shelter! Most likely it had been interested in the smell of sausage that I had boiled in the evening.

What I also found out was that it had stolen my garbage bag full of garbage and that sausage wrapping! I cursed myself for being so stupid that I left the garbage bag so that the fox could easily take it and spread it around the National Park!

Just as we were about to head out to Vieriharju I saw something in the distance in the first faint morning light. My garbage! I found my garbage spread and torn around along the snowmobile track! Thankfully the fox hadn't taken the garbage far and I was able to gather everything back.

We arrived at the Vieriharju wilderness cabin around 1 pm. This was actually the first day that I felt great and had extra energy left. One rest day paid off. Of course also the body starts to get used to skiing with pulkka and winter hiking generally speaking.

At Vieriharju our guide showed how to build a "lumikammi". It's basically a bit like an igloo, but this is built from a huge pile of snow. One member of our group slept in this "lumikammi".

I also had energy to dig around my tent to build a nice kitchen area in the snow.

In the evening we sat around a camp fire and cooked food in an open fire. It was a really nice day and evening.

The temperature in the evening was around -8 degrees Celsius.Read more