| Distance | Average Speed | Max Speed |
|---|---|---|
| 37.2 km | 13.6 km/h | 27 km/h |
There had been several cm of snow overnight and Timo had apparently gone out
early to make a fresh trail for me to follow. I left shortly after he returned at about 1100.
The basic plan was to head up to Janisvaara first with a detour through the training loops then continue east across the swamps to the snow mobile trail. I would then turn south, cross Lohilampi and follow some of my route from day two across the Tilsa road and south towards Kylkeinen.
I managed the first part OK and stopped for a brief break at Janisvaara but as I crossed the swamps west of Lohilampi I wanted to turn back north to get to Janisvaara again for lunch. There is a turning to do this but it was completely invisible.
However, I hit on an alternative plan. When I reached the power lines there was a faint trail going north which I persuaded the dogs to follow. From this it was easy to return to the hut for my lunch and afterwards re-join the route the same way.
With much less wind and better light, it was easy to find the turns I had missed yesterday. I made one mistake a few km from Kylkeinen when the bigger track seemed to turn north. I followed, but it seemed this had put in by some ice fishermen on the next lake and I had considerable problems turning the team on the ice.
I got to the hut at about 1530 and Aria turned up soon after with my dinner and a huge box of other food (enough for me for a fortnight). Aria produces excellent meals, but all her recipes are for about six people and she can’t scale them down. There was a lot left over!
She also had a bucket of already mixed dog food and both the hut and her box already contained water. I therefore had very little to do.
The only slight snag was that it had turned up before I had a chance to light the fire and I had to eat it immediately before it got cold so the room was a rather chilly 2.5°C as I was eating!
The fire lit easily (once I had removed all the ash) and the building started to warm up. The solar powered lighting remains completely useless, but my new rechargeable work light worked well.
A flurry of snow at Kykienen
I didn’t sleep very well as for several hours the dogs kept barking every ten minutes or so. They often howl for short periods at night but this wasn’t like that. I went out to check them but could find nothing wrong and half an hours later they started again. It is possible that a wild animal was wandering about, but it seems unlikely that it would stay around with the dogs barking, let alone once it had seen me.
Temperature during the day was about 0°C with sunny intervals.