Luosto by snowshoes

I was going to write about my holiday adventures in central Finland.

But then came The Big Snowfall

and powdered everything.

The snowfall still continues outside my window as I'm writing this.

So, obviously, we headed for a snowy adventure instead.

The destination for this time was Luostotunturi (or Luosto fell).

I'm working in the ski resort located there,

so I'm not quite easily driving there when it's my day off.

The idea came from my friend and he also offered to drive.

So why not.

And the day was totally worth it.

At first we walked by foot, as the snowshoe trail was so used,

that you didn't actually need snowshoes on it.

But after a while we decided to leave the trail

and headed to the unknown.

There was surprisingly a lot of snow in the forest.

And also surprise rocks just couple centimeters under the snow surface,

ready to scratch you knee.

The forest itself was calm and quiet.

Snow covering the trees and muffling all the sounds.

For a moment

we could find our self from this post-apocalyptic scene,

where we were walking in the quiet dead forest,

white ash covering everything,

just two of us left in the world.

I kinda like this image

of this post-apocalyptic dystopia.

As we got higher and reached the treeline,

the wind caught us.

The weather forecast had said the wind would be around 3 m/s.

But for our experience it was at least 13 m/s.

The change between the quiet and calm forest

and the roaring and pushing top of the fell was amazing.

In this kind of places

I feel I'm truly alive.

I can feel the power of the nature

the huge amount of energy,

transferring in to me.

Making me feel small and whole in the same time.

We walked across the highest top of Luosto

all the way to the weather ball.

The weather ball,

or light house as it looks like,

was looming a head of us.

Sometimes vanishing in to the clouds.

It felt a long way to get there.

The wind was pushing us from the side so hard

it was actually really difficult to walk straight. 

 The weather ball looked from distance like the Muumi Pappa's (Father Moomin)

house he build on the stormy shore of the sea when he was young.

We found shelter to enjoy our sandwiches and some hot tea

behind a small service building.

After the calm and wind protected break,

stepping out from the shelter

felt really adventurous.

The shortest way back to the treeline went against the wind.

We tried to cover our faces as good as possible,

but still you couldn't see anything as you couldn't keep you eyes open.

The small snow flakes flying with the hard wind

felt like a million glass fragments in your eyes.

So blindly and unspoken we pushed our self back to the cover of the treeline.

On this side of the fell we found a lot of powder snow

and beautiful open fields.

The spark for free riding was flaming inside of us.

Soon we promised, soon!