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| Lapland album |
This morning I got up before dawn to watch the sun rise. I went up the sight incline to the highest point on the property, but it still wasn't high enough to get a good view. So I climbed one of the Scots pine trees which would have been hard in any condition (tons of whorled branches, none of them wider than a carrot), but was even more challenging with all the snow. However, the view was more than worth it.
After breakfast we took a bus to Pyhä ski resort and National Park. It was really beautiful with tall spruce completely covered with snow as far as you could see.
When we first got there it was also really sunny, which was a pleasant change. Some people went skiing and snowboarding, but I went to the nature center and watched a video presentation about the area and got some information on trails. Then I set off for a gorge with a group of about 20 people, but after some disagreements about the directions, this was reduced to three people.
The amount of snow made it pretty rough going, and it was really windy down at the bottom and began to snow. The lady at the nature center said that she didn't know what kind of condition the trail would be in and she didn't advise going down. And when someone in Finland says something like that, you know they really mean it, and they're not just worried about liabilities. So we didn't go all the way. But it was still quite a trek (which my hip handled beautifully).
After another fire and dinner (reindeer this time) I decided to skip sauna in exchange for another attempt at a night hike. This one was much more successful. Most of the time it was pretty cloudy, but the sky did clear for a while, and I saw something I'm PRETTY sure was the northern lights. It was almost like the sun was just setting in one part of the sky, and there was a slight lightness and an orange/greenish color to it. But it was anything but spectacular.
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