Muotkatunturi wilderness area in the north-west part of Inari consists 1571 square kilometers of fell plateau, forests, marshes, and lakes. No marked trails, only 2 open wilderness huts. As the land is mostly open fell area or covered with downy birch and dwarf birch, it's quite popular willow grouse hunting ground. Also popular for hiking, as the large fell plateaus offer nice views. Below is a few pics from my recent hiking trip in the Muotkatunturi wilderness.
We started from the Kaamanen-Karigasniemi road. First kilometers were in rather thick birch forest. Still nice, as due to the late summer mosquitoes weren't really active yet.
After a while the scenery started to open. Excellent weather for hiking, cloudy and a bit above 10 celcius.
Like you might have seen in my previous hiking post, Kumu was walking leashed. It was the same this time. As a hunting dog he starts looking for the game when I'm walking with him being unleashed. Birds are still having eggs in their nests...
These belong to
Pluvialis apricaria. We almost stepped on it while walking, it took off right in front of us.
Here's another one, obviously having a nest nearby too, according to it's behaviour while we were passing by.
It's the change of June/July, and some areas still have quite large spots of snow. Especially creeks and northern sides of the fells. Very packed snow, easy to walk on. Also served as a fridge for our butter and cheese during the breaks.
First days were still on the cooler side, so the stove was used in the evenings.
The time of the midnight sun. You can't really tell what time of the day it is. This was taken after 10 pm, right after the trouts started getting active in this pond next to our campsite.
After spending a night at the pond by a fell we descended towards the river Peltojoki. This small hut was built by Pentti Lahtinen in late 1940's, on a rented property. He didn't remember to take care of his rental duties, and the hut ended up being state property. Novadays open for public.
Then up to the fell area again. Having a lunch break in decently warm weather. Snowy fell sides remind us about the mid-summer....
Rainy and misty moment when passing a fell top, before reaching the lake where we would camp for the next night.
Beatiful scenery, just enough firewood for the evening, but no fish. Except for pikes, which quite often are a sign of no other fish around....
After the cool weather of the first days of the trip the weather changed. Warm and sunny. I could say even hot. By hot weather I mean sunny and temperature some degrees over 20 celcius. Some of you might disagree with me what's a hot weather....
But Kumu agrees with me, it's hot. Especially for a dog who haven't shed his winter fur yet....
Luckily there's this lovely snow to cool down!
Obviously willow grouses had nests still too, as this one tried to lead us further away from the place where we scared it while passing a marsh by the fell side.
A beach on the south side of Peltojärvi. Again a HOT day, +24 celcius.
Where there's been a man, there's always.... well, you know. These were obviously brought there by snowmobile, a quad bike, or a boat. I wonder why it was so difficult to take them back the same way too? Luckily this is not a common scenery.
Plenty of flat ground for camping by the Peltojärvi. Nicely open for the wind to enter too, as the number of mosquitoes started growing.
Midnight fishing. It seems that fish are active very late in the evening and during the night, and resting on the bright daylight of the midsummer. Of course we didn't always believe it, and had to try our luck when passing a nice fishing site. But no, all our catches came in the late evening, night, or early morning.
This river gave us some graylings...
...which were cooked on the fire.
For the last days of the trip stove was kept packed, and a mosquito net was more useful. But yeah, it's July, so it's time for the summer to come!
