River in Lapland

When you hike from Didnojohka to Lossuahytta, you have to keep track of rivers on map and on couple occasions, you have to cross them. All of them are pretty small at the end of summer. In our two hikes along the trail, we’ve been do all crossing with hiking boots.

More photographs about rivers:

Rapids on Didnojohka

All rapids on a trail from Didnu to Lossuahytta are on first half of a trail. They don’t have the size or volume of big waterfalls, but if you have tripod, time, creative and weather is co-operating with you, I am sure that rapids offer interesting possibilities for nice photographs.
Once you reach the point, where you have to start crossing rivers, you will only see calm water in a form of slow moving river and lakes (until you cross the border to Finland).

Trail towards Lossuahytta

Trail from Didnojohta to Lossuahytta and across the border to Lossuahytta is good dry land, except for few places where you have to cross river and riverbeds, which are full of birch and willows, but we’ll come to those later.
Trail goes up and down on small ridges. Due to altitude, whenever you go over a ridge, you might find clouds waiting for you on the other side. If you are lucky, you will only feel moisture, but if you are unlucky, like we were in year 2009, you can quickly find yourself in a rain.

Things were still looking good

Didnojohka in fall colors

Trail keeps on going along Didnojohka, which offers you lot of opportunities to take photographs about free flowing river. Here the ground has got first glimps of autumn colors. On the background we have birches (one of the subspecies of Downy Birch to be more precise).

Wider view from same place:

Hydroelectric Power Plant

Once you follow trail uphill, you will soon arrive to small hydroelectric power plant. There is small dam across the river and small pond on top of it. Plant offers some interesting possibilities for photography, but other than that, there isn’t much to do.

Power plant from distance

Swamp, which had cottongrass and cloudberries

Beginning of a trail from Didnojohka to Käsivarsi Wilderness Area goes uphill. You will soon arrive to small swamp, which at least in August, has nice field of cottongrass on it. While I went to take photographs of it, I also found some cloudberries.

More photographs from Didnu

Looking back to starting place in Didnu

Looking forward towards Lossuahytta (still 10-12km to go)

Car heading towards Finland in Didnu

When you check hiking maps about Käsivarsi Wilderness Area, there is only one hiking trail that goes from Kilpisjärvi to Halti (this trail is called Kalottireitti). However, if you read finnish hiking forums (for example relaa.com), you will soon learn that there is also another way to get into Halti. This trail starts from place called Didnu in Norway (or Didnojohka, if you look it up from a map). Best way to reach it is to take a taxi from Kilpisjärvi and ask them to give you a ride. It will cost something like 30-40 euros/group.
From here our trail will take us to 12km hike to Lossujärvi, which is already in Finland, but more about that in future days.

Photographs from Didnojohka

Car heading to Norway

After few hundred meters you get nice view

More information

Related posts:
Kilpisjärvi, Finland

Related photographs:
Käsivarsi Wilderness area (2009)
Hike to Halti and back (2008)

Walls of Kilpis apartment complex and Saana fell in background

Our next destination in Hiking in Finland blog is going to be Käsivarsi Wilderness area in Lapland, where I’ve been hiking in two occasion. Last year (2008), I went and conquered Halti fell and this year (2009), I visited couple other popular destinations in the area. Before we can get into Käsivarsi Wilderness area, hikers will usually travel to village of Kilpisjärvi in North-West corner of Finland. There are at least three choices, how you can get their. Popular choices for transportation are:

• flight to Kittilä and take bus from there to Kilpisjärvi
• night train from Helsinki to Kolari and take bus from there to Kilpisjärvi
• take bus ride from Helsinki to Kilpisjärvi

My choice in both times has been night train to Kolari and bus from there to Kilpisjärvi. You will arrive to Kilpisjärvi in early afternoon. If you have reserved room in Hotel Kilpis or reserved cottage for a last night before trip back home, you still have time to drop your spare clothes and other stuff that you don’t need in hiking trail, get some lunch and take taxi for the last leg of our journey to beginning of hiking trail.
One thing that I probably should mention about lunch is that there are something like four places in Kilpisjärvi, where you can get some lunch. First three places are Ida-Sofia’s cafe, which usually have just one choice, Tuulan Kahvila, which can make pizzas, hamburgers and such and Haltinmaa, which has lunch buffet. These three places are within walking distance from each others and pretty close to local market and Hotel Kilpis (which kitchen is only open from 17-23). Fourth place for lunch is called Retkeilykeskus, which also has some buffet, if I remember correctly from last year, but its few (3-5) kilometers north from the rest.

Ruka	Hautajärvi Ristikallio Oulanka

In last January, we started our hiking trip from Hautajärvi (in Lapland) to Taivalköngäs rapids (in Kuusamo). We made sidetrip to Ristikallio, returned back to Taivalköngäs and continued our journey south to Ruka, where the journey ends. I have to admit that writing took whole lot more time than what I had anticipated, but I am still glad that I decided to stay on topic and write something about each step along the way. Now it is good time to wrap things up by making list of articles that I wrote about Karhunkierros hiking trail.

List of my articles about Karhunkierros hiking trail

Since Ruka is one of the end points of Karhunkierros hiking trail, it is now time to wrap things up, make list of all the places that we’ve gone through alone the way and decide, which hiking trail I should cover next. I’ve been thinking about Riisitunturi, Kevo Trail and Halti as next logical choices, but haven’t yet made up my mind. If you have preferences, let me know in comments.

View to North from Ruka fell

In our journey from Hautajärvi to Ruka, we still have Ruka fell as one last obstacle before sauna, bed, etc.
From navigation point of view, this is the place where you are most likely to get lost, because there are ski slopes and all kind of shorter trails with their trail marks. If you are able to follow trail marks, you should finally come to one of the lower peaks of Ruka (one with ski jump tower). If you get lost at somepoint or simply don’t want to climb anymore than you really have to, just look for signs to Rukahovi and you should be able to find pass between Ruka’s peaks to get to the other side and end point of Karhunkierros hiking trail.
If you don’t have any accomodation reserved, Rukahovi is nearest hotel to the gate. It is also one of the places, which should be able to get you bus ride into airport, if you are planning to fly home. If you are heading to airport, make sure that you dump all extra Marinol and/or Sinol, if you’ve been using alcohol based cooker on a trail, before you walk into airport’s security checkpoint. They probably wouldn’t be too happy to find them from your baggage.

More pictures from Ruka fell