Finland: Halti (20/28)

Docking into Helsinki port, early in the morning and with little sleep, we drove to the outskirts and parked up for a nap. Waking up for a spot of lunch and then a short walk in the nature reserve, whose car park we’d used for our rest. It was a pleasant walk along the river, with the footpath mainly on boardwalks, raising us above the boggy ground underneath.

Next we headed to Rauma, arriving the next day after a quiet lakeside camp. The centre of this Finnish town is a UNESCO World Heritage site preserved as an example of traditional Scandinavian wooden houses.

After a walk around the old town we hit the road and headed north towards the Arctic Circle. We’d chosen a slightly longer route which hugged to coast, trading a longer drive for the maritime views. However this turned out to be a mistake, as even though at times we were only a few hundred metres from the coast we couldn’t see it. Dense, straight rows of pine forest blocked our view on both sides of the road. And so it was for our drive through most of Finland, with straight roads surrounded by pine forest.

We stopped in Oulu for the evening. We’d been keen to visit a Finish sauna and Oulu had an excellent one, on a floating pontoon on a lake in the town. Run by volunteers, it had a small boat pulled with a rope to reach it. It was busy and we had to queue for a short while to be allowed on, mainly because the World Air Guitar Championships were currently being held in Oulu and there was a outing for the competitors at this sauna.

Seating around 15 people, this wood-clad sauna was wood fired with the stove heading stones placed on top and around the chimney. Then you could ladle water onto the stones to create the desired amount of steam. When you’d had enough, you could head outside for an optional plunge in the cold lake, which was bracing but actually quite pleasant.

Continuing our drive north we crossed into the Arctic Circle, but we still had quite a way to go. Halti, the highest Finnish peak, is positioned on the northern Finish-Norwegian border 500km further on. Shortly after we saw our first reindeer, grazing by the side of the road. There are very few wild reindeer and nearly all are farmed for meat and fur.

Halti can be reached via a 3-4 day hike through horrific bog from the Finnish side, or a 1 day hike from Norway. We opted to hike from the Norwegian side, and parked at trail head for the night. The next day our route took us briefly over grassy tundra, before climbing steeply up to a boulder field plateau. We followed cairns then a reindeer fence over the ankle-busting boulders.

Leaving the fence we followed more cairns, up more boulders — accompanied by brief rain showers — to the summit.

The cloud lifted briefly while we were at the summit and we stopped for a little lunch. As the cloud came back in we turned around and retraced our route back across the bleak, grey landscape. As we arrived back at the van we spotted a herd of reindeer grazing ahead.

We spent the evening camped at the end of a fjord, deciding in the morning to head to Sweden via Senja, Norway’s second biggest island. We toured around the island stopping at a number of scenic spots to admire the view.

Finally we took a short hike from the Hesten trail head to a viewpoint overlooking the dramatic Segla peak.