Back in from the cold

We’re back, more or less in one piece. Was a great trip; even though I was initially a bit sceptical of the idea of camping in subzero temperatures for a week, it turned out to be very cool (pun intended). Nice physical workout too – even though our daily distances weren’t much worth mentioning, the act of skiing with a backpack on your back is work in of itself. It was a strange and somewhat alien feeling to find out that you can both survive and be quite comfortable while camping out on an icy plain, in temperatures that would kill an unprotected person fast. As long as you have proper equipement and know what to do, you don’t have a problem.

In total, we slept 4 nights out in the wilderness in a tent and 2 in wilderness huts. The first “hut stop” wasn’t an intended one; we originally intended just to stop there for lunch and then soldier on, but then Janka’s ski binding suddenly broke (in a non-fixable fashion) and our stay became an overnighter. The hut (which thankfully was close by at that point) was out of GSM range, so we sent a written note back to Kilpisjärvi via some snowmobile-equipped visitors and hoped for the best. Lo and behold, the next morning the Border Guard guys came along and dropped off a pair of skis plus ski boots, obtained from the Kilpisjärvi Travel Center (Retkeilykeskus). Wow, that’s both “my tax dollars at work” and damn good service. A huge thanks to both parties, and also to the couple who carried our note back.

Things I learned:

  • winter/arctic camping is actually quite fun, assuming you have good gear and good company
  • despite what some claim, for a beginner it’s not easier to ski with a backpack as compared to a pull-along sled (“ahkio”, in Finnish). The weight of the backpack made ski control a lot more tricky than it needed to be, and during difficult descents my legs tired very fast – and the backpack wasn’t even that heavy, 18kg or so.
  • always remember to check camera lens for dirt after each day of shooting. Didn’t do it this time, and as a result I have a lot of nasty splotches in the raw “footage” that ends up consuming a lot of post-processing time.
  • even though it’s not a pro body, our trusty Canon 20d performs well in subzero extended stays, too. A week in arctic temperatures and 300+ pictures: no problems, and no need to swap batteries. Impressive.
  • next time I’ll take along an extra pair of “technical” long underwear. Even though I did ok with just one, baing able to switch to a clean set halfway through would have increased my comfort level.
  • wool-padded winter (rubber) boots plus thick wool socks rock for camp footwear.
  • next time I’ll probably want to have my own set of skis, preferably with some (small) telemark-suitable site cuts. The borrowed set I had along now performed fine, so this is more of a “tweak” than anything else.
  • The Kilpisjärvi area of Lapland has pretty awesome scenery.

All things considered, a huge success (cue “Portal song” here). Even though I guess it goes into the “extreme camping” category, the trip felt like a wonderful vacation and I feel mucho relaxed now. Seeing how we were all already talking about “next time” after the trip, I think everyone felt pretty much the same way.

The weather was (mostly) fantastic. Almost too hot in the beginning, it dropped to a wonderful “few degrees below zero” for the rest of the week. The coldest temperature we recorded was -16C one night just before crawling into the tent to sleep. That started to be a bit on the chilly side, but not too bad. The final day was very windy, and our last few kilometers of travel were done in the middle of a honest snow storm; visibility in the 20m department and wind howling. Fun at that point, but would have been a lot less fun further out in the field.

Huge thanks to Timo for both the initial idea and for being the “winter camping expert” of the expedition – and for being a great field chef, as always. Our pizza and lasagne (made in a camp cooker oven thingy) in the middle of the wilderness raised more than a few eyebrows and got us some envy points.

I’m still working of doing post-processing for the pictures, but a small selection from the first 3 days is available now. I took a lot of handheld HDR pictures, using the 20d’s auto-bracket feature (+/-2 EV). Some pretty nice results, though the dirt on the lens I mentioned forced me to do a lot of post-proc work – and some of those still need more tweaking later on, you can still see artifacts here and there that I want to clean away at some point. Still, for handheld HDRs I though some of the results were quite acceptable.

  1. Avatar

    By marko 2 days later:


    Sounds like great adventure. Dirt or sratches on front lens shouldn’t affect to the pictures. Check that your camera’s sensor is clean.

  2. Avatar

    By Orava 3 days later:


    The dirt was on the inside lens surface, where it unfortunately did leave splotches. Careless cleaning before trip :(

    …and yeah, I should also get the sensor cleaned. Two trips to Burning Man and various other trips have probably left all sorts of crud there, too.

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