As I wrote in the last entry, with the beginning of May the poles for marking the skiing tracks were removed, signalling the end of the winter – and the way too short skiing season. This fact however, let my girl friend and me decide to cross the lake Ounasjärvi for the last time this winter and to go on a small skiing trip into Pallas-Ounas national park, to stay over at the autiotupa Sioskuru.
On the way to there, when dark and heavy clouds where hanging above our heads, strong winds didn’t make it easy for us, to ski on the hard and very icy snow. Generally the good thing about this season is, that you don’t need to worry anymore about breaking into the snow, as you usually will find a hard layer of snow covering the ground, allowing you to choose your own path. However, as we left from Hetta late, we were following the shortest way, passing by the autiotupa Pyhäkero. Even though the light conditions in May are making it possible to hike all day long, we still wanted to arrive at Sioskuru at some point that day, and not to ski during the whole night. As we were hungry already, we also realized that once again we forgot our cutlery at home, so we still had some wood carving ahead of us, in order to improvise ..
After a good sleep in the Sioskuru open wilderness hut, we got up to chop some more wood and fill up the basket for the next travelers, when we discovered, that there was lot’s of fresh snow outside. Well OK, that wasn’t really a surprise as the weather forecast was predicting snowfall (but so far we always had such a weather when we passed by there earlier, so the forecast didn’t keep us away; and who knows: probably we even wouldn’t have been able to recognize the hut in sunshine .. ); just the amount of fresh snow was a little bit unexpected. Anyhow, we tried to put on some other wax on our skiers, and started our return trip via Savilampi, on the east side of Pyhäkero.
Even though I put on the wrong wax for a while, and really had to sweat a lot to be able to ski through the approximately 20 centimeters of fresh, wet and heavy snow, it turned out to be a wonderful afternoon and evening after all. I didn’t really expect, that the most likely last skiing trip in this season, carried out in the middle of spring time, would show me the landscape again in such a wonderful, winterly suit. After adjusting the wax at several occasions (e.g. over open fire or on a gas stove), I got back some kind of gliding characteristics to my skiers, which allowed me to increase my speed – or more precisely, to decrease my exertion, since I was not the only person struggling from wrong wax decisions. But anyhow, this didn’t lessen the enjoyment of the trip back home at all, even if it again became late at night, when we arrived at our target
