2016-04-21 61 24

Location

In the forest near Juupajoki.

Participants

Tilley

Expedition

My ride this week.

Also this week I was commuting by car the whole way. On the way back, near Juupajoki, about 3/4 way home, there appeared a suitable hashpoint, which meant taking only about 8 km of detour. I couldn't resist, and punched the coordinates into my GPS device when preparing to leave the office.

The day was quite dry but still chilly. First I crawled in the traffic congestion out of Helsinki city (5 km took half hour) and then engaged in boring motorway driving for almost 2 hours and 170 km. Two weeks in a row this motorway driving gets a bit monotonous, maybe next week I'll take the cheap bus or something.

After the motorway stretch I had to drive still 40 km of regular highway, after which I was nearing the hash-site. I had looked up from the map that the hash was about 100 meters from the bigger gravel road, or mayyyybe I could get a little closer if I drove some kind of forest-tractor track for 200 meters. It was not hard to decide which one to choose, of course I had to put my truck's abilities to good use to save some steps. :)

The hashpoint is that way.

The tractor track was actually very easy: good, dry, sandy terrain, only little patches of snow and I didn't even have to engage 4WD, although a big ground clearance was definitely needed, the road had huge bumps because of the melting frost. A regular passenger car trying to go there would probably have been stuck on its belly.

Proof there's still snow in the forest.

So I parked the car, got out and changed clothes from office-uniform to more appropriate clothes for rumbling through forest. There was only 65 meters to go, but the forest was young and quite thick, so didn't want to get my good trousers dirty.

When ready, I stumbled towards the hashpoint in the midst of the young trees. There were still some snow patches and I saw at least two piles of moose droppings. The hashpoint was on the edge of the thickety patch and some clearer forest, or actually a swamp patch. I pinpointed the location, took some pictures for proof, admired the view and listened to the chirping of numerous birds in the air. It's spring!

Stupid grin on the hashpoint.

Then I left and drove home to see that in the couple of days I had been gone, the lake had finally got rid of almost all of it's ice and the swans were very happy about that, splashing in the whole bay area to make clear for everyone it is their territory.