Yeti rides

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Spring

Since my last skiing trip of the winter, the spring has arrived rapidly. Mostly above freezing temperatures with rain quickly got rid of the snow, though I personally would have been happier without the rain, since there is already enough water in the terrain. I originally planned to go on a backpacking overnighter with the kids this weekend, but when I had to spend Thursday and Friday in the bed with a high fever and some vomiting, this didn't happen. On Saturday I felt better, and spent a lot of time outdoors during the weekend strolling around in the neighbouring forest with and without the kids, in an attempt to get rid of the intense aching in the back after having been in the bed for two days. Hence a status report of the spring where I live.

It feels almost unbelievable that I was skiing on 30 cm of snow two weeks ago on mires, so I wanted to check see how the small mire 200 meters from my backyard looked. It was wet...

Generally, there is a lot of water in the terrain.

No overnighter, but twist bread is ok.

And pancakes also seem acceptable.

There is still some snow in the pine forest, and it will take some time before the spring is seen there in the form of new green plants. There are a number of evergreen plants there, though.

In other type of forests, and especially open places, the first spring flowers are already there.

Liverwort.

Coltsfoot

The lakes are still mostly covered with ice...

... but the birds are already returning to the nearby wetland.

Coot.

Whooper Swan.

Common Goldeneye.

The night temperatures still occasionally go below zero, but the ice quickly melts again.

This kind of winter-to-spring transition is optimal, at least from my point of view. Ski season continued into April and then a quick transition into real spring, not like last year when the ski season ended around March 20th and then nothing happened almost for a month.

Sunday, April 7, 2013

Skiing in the Vaskijärvi Nature Reserve

The winter continues and there was no reason not to go out on a ski overnighter, especially since this isn't anything you normally do in April. Usually we have spring by now in Southern Finland. JJ also thought a ski overnighter would be a good idea and suggested the Vaskijärvi area, which consists a several large open mires and a few lakes.

A little over five in the afternoon we got going. It was several degrees over freezing and the sun felt warm. There was a short forest section before we arrived at the mire.

The open mires are usually surrounded by less open mires with small pines.

Arriving at the lake Vähä-Valanen.

The glide wasn't spectacular off the snow.

JJ skiing on Vähä-Valanen.

A short mire section later we arrived at the lake Iso-Valanen.

Valastensaari

The summer route, which I've done a number of times on bike.

Continuing on the Valastensuo mire.

The next mire, Karja-Kurjensuo.

Less snow off the mire.

A small island on the mire.

Arriving at the lake Kajavajärvi.

Time for a short break.

The outlet from Kajavajärvi was open and a pretty beautiful place.

A little forest before arriving at the Kaukosuo mire.

Kaukosuo

After a little over three hours of skiing we made camp. This time I had my bivy bag. I made pancakes again, which tasted great.

A good, but short, night's sleep later we had breakfast. I made my coffee with a GSI Outdoors Personal Java Press this time.

We started skiing again at eight. The weather was now cloudy and it soon started to snow.

The snowing soon stopped, at least for the moment, and we continued back with a different route. The glide was very good and after the colder night the skis didn't sink more than a few millimeters into the snow.

There were occasional bare spots on the mire and I even found a few cranberries in perfect and tasty shape.

This mire area differs from the Kurjenrahka area, where I've spent more time, in that here the mires often end with bare cliffs. In the Kurjenrahka area the mires are usually surrounded by quite dense forest.