2013-03-24 62 27

Location

In Kuopio, the Puijo recreational area, near the Poukama summer camp site.

Participants

Tilley
Tilley's daughter

Plans

Checking the hashpoints for the weekend, I noticed that this point fell only 9 km from my home. No excuses to miss this one! It appeared easily accessible, in a forest on the edge of a nature protection area, and the nearest road was not far.

Expedition

Our hashvehicle.

I packed my baby daughter along, and started to bike towards the hash. The baby fell instantly asleep, as she usually does when aboard the bike. This time I also brought gaiters, learning from previous adventures. Most of the way the route was familiar to me, only the last few hundred meters were something I've never been before. The bicycle paths were in good condition, there were quite a lot of icy patches though, because the surface of the snow had melted the previous day and then again frozen in the nighttime. At 10 am, the sun was still not able to melt it again. I have a studded front tyre, so I had no problems, though. Soon I was in the vicinity of the hashpoint, and quickly located the right turn to a small private road leading to the evangelic lutheran church's summer camp site Poukama.

The spring. Hashpoint 5 meters behind it.

The road turned into the thick forest, temperature dropping noticeably in the shade. (btw I'm claiming the frozen achievement again without thermometer, which I again forgot to bring.) I drove all the way into their parking lot, as I had surveyed from the map. The hash was now only 70 meters away, into the forest. I had hoped that there would be some paths in the forest, the place being so near the camp site, which had activity also in winter. Later it turned out that there actually was a path leading directly to the hashpoint, but I didn't see the beginning of it because of the snow heaps which had been plowed from the parking site. So I parked my bike, put on gaiters and because the baby was still sleeping, detached her crib from the bike and started to wade in the 40 cm snow towards the hashpoint. It was quite slow going, as trudging in the snow usually is, because I couldn't see the ground beneath the snow, which was quite uneven. Now there was also the added weight of the baby and the crib, which is quite unergonomic to carry, especially because I had the GPS device on the other hand. In one point I actually stepped into some sort of deep hole, which had water in the bottom (that I could feel in my shoe). The baby was not bothered by this, however, but still slept.

At the hashpoint!

Already nearing the hashpoint, only 20 meters to go, I stumbled to the path mentioned above, and had easy going from there on. The path led to a small spring. At least it was small now, probably there is more water when the snow starts to melt. The hashpoint was only 5 meters behind the spring, and I set up a couple of photos there. There was a nicer-than-usual view from the hashpoint, the forest was not very thick and the slope offered some view. Sunlight was filtered beautifully from behind the foliage of the large spruce trees.

The note.

The baby was still sleeping. To keep this state of affairs, I turned back without admiring the view further, and backtraced my own steps to the bike. Along the way I posted my note to the messaging board of the spring. I loaded the baby along, took off gaiters which had gathered some snow inside them. Should have had the real hiking boots instead of my regular winter-city-shoes, which actually have a gore-tex layer in them, but not high enough shafts. I ate a banana and drank some water and started my return journey. It was quite uneventful, but the surfaces of the bicycle paths had now started to melt, which started to gather some snow between my rear tyre and fender. This made some noise. As this my first time driving with this fender combination in this kind of conditions, I was a bit worried that there might be some problem. Fortunately there was none, and I safely reached home. And the baby was still sleeping. Should I award her some kind of Sleeping Beauty Achievement for visiting a hashpoint without even realizing that?