Picture Galleries & Stories from my Hiking Trips and Journeys
Since the mid 1940s in Kilpisjärvi, in the northwest of Finland, close to the Norwegian border, a ski race is carried out during midsummer. While not participating, I visited this year’s edition of the midsummer ski race as a spectator, before continuing a “night hike” in the vicinity of Kilpisjärvi and the Saana mountain. Finally some snow again! Continue reading “Midsummer in Lapland: Traditional Kilpisjärvi Ski Race”
While I cannot and do not blend out human caused environmental degradation, I generally focus my camera lenses rather on the beauty of nature, which is why you predominantly find nature photography in my blog. But there are places, where this is simply not possible; places, where nature has been wiped out. One of these places is Nikel, on the Kola peninsula, in northwestern Russia, close to the Norwegian border … Continue reading “From Murmansk to Nikel: Environmental Disaster on the Kola Peninsula”
Slowly also the ice on lake Ounasjärvi breaks and disappears, leaving over the spring flood. Some images from the Kotiseutumuseo near Hetta ..
Continue reading “Ice Breaking on Lake Ounasjärvi – A Visit to Kotiseutumuseo”
The snow is almost completely gone. The sun and warmth have cleaned up most of the trails from snow, allowing it again to walk or hike around Hetta. Yet the trails in the forests are still covered by some snow, making it difficult to cycle (beside, there is lots of water everywhere); also the lakes are still frozen so can’t go boating, while for ice fishing or ice skating the ice is not strong enough any more. Actually, it is more some kind of floating slush than ice. This all makes it a bit tricky to go out into the nature at the moment, so instead of making any trips, some short walks have to do it in order to get some fresh air.
Anyhow, fortunately just behind our house a hiking trail starts, so it is quite easy to take a few steps into the forest. And, we don’t have to go there alone: Our cats always try following us when we go for a walk. This is kind of annoying when one of us wants to go shopping, as it forces us sometimes to lock the cats in, in order to not follow us. However, their habit of following us is lovely when turn into the forest, where our little room mates seem to enjoy the exciting adventure to go to places where they usually don’t go without human company ..
Here is some footage of our smaller room mates, joining us for a short walk through the forest.
The snow is gone, yet, there are still signs relating to the skiing tracks
At temperatures around plus ten degrees Celsius, the snow melts quickly ..
