Day 0, Espoo - Ivalo

Arrived to Ivalo in the afternoon. The snow is almost gone from most of the country. In Oulu where I was last night there was almost no snow. At least not enough to ski and drag pulkka behind you.

In Ivalo there's still enough snow. At least 70 cm of it. But it's warm. Really warm, +6 degrees of Celsius!  It is highly unusual and unheard of according to locals that it's this warm in mid-March. Temperature wise this is like Spring or Autumn hike and I was wondering is all this 45 to 50 kg of winter hiking gear really needed? But the weather can change quickly in the fell and in Korvatunturi in January the weather forecast was constantly wrong about the temperature by even ten degrees!

This warm weather is going to make this a challenging ski tour. It could be that we need to change the route as crossing the Hammasjärvi might be impossible. The lake is frozen for sure, but it might have water on top of the ice, a lot of water making it impossible to travel. We'll see on Monday.Read more