A blog in English about hiking in Finland. / Englanninkielinen blogi retkeilystä ja vaeltamisesta Suomessa. Ajatuksena kertoa kauniin maamme upeista retkeilymahdollisuuksista ja toisaalta omanlaisesta vaelluskulttuuristamme ulkomaalaisille, houkutella heitä Suomeen luontomatkalle. Ja hauskaa olisi, jos blogista olisi iloa myös meille suomalaisille, sekä ikänsä täällä asuneille että vasta tänne muuttaneille ja suomea vielä osaamattomille.
25.4.2024 Hello everyone! As I write this there is half a meter of snow and it is very much winter still here in Northern Finland. But there have already been many warm days and the snow cover has thinned a lot. In a couple of weeks the snow is just a beautifu
27.9.2022 Jouni Laaksonen This blog post is about my new book, Talviretkeilijän opas (a guidebook for winter hiking). The book is in Finnish, so this blog starts with Finnish and turns to English only in the end. Tosiaan uusin kirjani ilmestyi juuri! Jos olet
I was asked if I have a list of gears I carry on my winter hikes. Of course I have, but I didn’t have one in English right away. Now I translated my list to English, and I decided to make a post of it. A sledge (pulka) is a good option to pull your winter gear
Hello, all my readers! Sorry for being so quiet for the past months. I am alive and active, but I just haven’t found time to write blog posts. And I suspect the situation is not going to change any time soon. I just finished with one book manuscript, and the n
A 40+ km hike with a 7-year-old girl. How did it go, was she happy? See many pics!
I hiked a lot with my younger daughter this summer. Also general tips for hiking with kids.
Hot day is best spent on a beach! And the best beach is a deserted one, I think. :)
Uusi kirjani ilmestyi juuri ja se pitää sisällään lähes 400 sivua retki- ja vaellustarinoita! Tässä blogikirjoituksessa lisätietoa kirjasta. / This blog post is exceptionally both in Finnish and in English. It's about my new book (which is written in Finnish.)
May is magical! I did one of my all time best hikes, by skiing, and the very next day we went canoeing and swam on a beach!
I've been skiing quite a lot this winter. Sometimes along ski tracks, but mostly outside any tracks. See pics of winter hiking!
Hiking in midwinter means long and cold evenings to spend in the camp. Or is there a way to make camp life warmer, more comfortable? Seems there is.
Finland is going to establish a new national park, and there are five main candidates. No one knows yet which one will be the next national park, but here are descriptions and pics of each of them.
More text and pics about my five weeks hike. Especially pondering about on trail vs off trail, and about hiking solo, and what about my lightweight equipment...
I had a magnificent birthday present for my 50th anniversary: I got a possibility to do a five weeks long hike trough five large wildernesses. See the long hike as a slideshow one pic per day!
More pics of wild beauty, and pics from our family hikes, and more cloudberries than I've ever seen...
In this twelve post series I have told about over one hundred wilderness huts, with map links. This is only a small part of Finnish wilderness hut network. Many more huts you will find at nationalparks.fi/en/huts (in English), and even more in my and Joel Ahol
Many cozy and personal wilderness huts are built by hiking associations or such. See some examples.
Red Campion inspired me to select ten wild beauties from my photo archives!
The weather conditions are just perfect right now. This is the best time to hike! Or...
In this post you'll find some more extraordinary origins for wilderness huts.
Do you like writing, maybe poems or lyrics? And do you like nature? Here's a competition where you can combine these two!
Today is World Book Day! There's a campaign called #behindeverybook, and here's my contribution.
Imagine it's 19th century and you are living in the middle of forest. No road comes to your home, and there are no tractors or other oil-based helpers. Clearing a forest or a rich mire into a field is very hard work, and there is not much field area around you
Water mill is a fascinating invention. There used to be thousands of water mills in Finland. Most of them are ruins now, but some are restored as sights, and some even serve as wilderness huts.
Going out to nature does good to us, that is generally known. It's always fun, and sometimes you encounter even more. I saw this weekend something special, a first in my life.
Imagine the life of a fire guard. Alone deep in the middle of backwoods, and with a great responsibility. What better place to imagine this than a wilderness hut that used to be a fire guard's cabin! In addition the scenery is superb.
This is my 100th blog post! See what have been the most viewed topics. And see what my two new books look like!
Is there snow where you live? Finland is divided into two this winter: in south there is no snow, in north there is plenty. See some snowy pics!
Forests of Finland have been in use for a long time. In the era of two-man saws and axes there were hundreds of lumberjacks' cabins throughout Finnish woods. Some of them act as open wilderness huts nowadays.
Have you ever dreamed of spending the Christmas in wilderness? I've spent two Christmas Eves in a wilderness hut, far away from nearest road, and I can recommend the experience! Wilderness huts that originally were reindeer herders' huts is the main topic this
