Rather an unusual sledding trip this year as I won’t be doing any sledding! Finland is experiencing its earliest Spring in living memory (including that of Timo’s 86 year old mother) and the snow is rapidly disappearing.
I knew about these problems in advance, but since I was already booked to attend a work meeting in Oulu, I had to come to Finland anyway. I therefore propose to spend a few days just enjoying the peace and quiet of the forest.
I took the sleeper train, as in 2024, and then got a relatively early bus to Jurmu. I was met by Timo who bemoaned the weather and explained that the last guests had run on the 17th and he had to cancel all subsequent trips.
With plenty of daylight left, I went for a walk to see what some familiar tracks looked like. My immediate observation was that the snow is very patchy. Particularly in the forest there were sections of trail several hundred metres long which could be driven (although the snow was very wet). But these were separated by large sections with which were virtually snow free so in practice it wasn’t possible to get to the driveable bits.
The first thing I spotted was a huge pile of tree stumps. This rather reminded me of the “Stumpery” which we saw in a historic garden a year or so ago.
Many of the forest drainage ditches were becoming visible. They looked a bit odd until I realised that they still contained a layer of ice, but that water was now running over the top.
After walking round some of the training loop, I came back across the swamps below the main trail which were stating to get very wet. In places, the trails were still visible where the compacted snow hadn’t yet completely melted.
Although the swamp was almost completely snow free, it was very noticeable that snow was still tending to remain in the forest where presumably there was less sun.
