Hiking in Lapland

Oulanka Canyon (Oulangan kanjoni)

Oulanka Canyon (Oulangan Kanjoni) is second sightseeing location in our virtual hiking trip in Karhunkierros. It is also the last sightseeing location in Karhunkierros, which is really in Lapland (rest of them are in Kuusamo).
Oulanka Canyon is one of my favorite spots in Karhunkierros. It is also a sight that you can easily miss if you blindly follow the trail without taking interest to interesting photo opportunities and such that might require small sidetrips. When you arrive to Savilampi (regardless on whether you started from Ruka or Hautajärvi), you should be able to find signs that have arrow and ‘Oulangan Kanjoni’ with some numbers as text.
Before you start going from Savilampi to Oulanka Canyon, there are few things that you have to decide:

1. Do you leave your pack to cabin or not? There is always small chance, that someone steals your pack, but you will have to climb up and down in stairs and rocks, so its real burden to take with you. In 2005, I left my pack into cabin and in 2007, I left my pack into tent.
2. You can follow the gorge either on south or north rim of the gorge. Both sides have stairs in toughest parts, but I think that north ridge has better view and it also has nice sign (with ‘Oulangan kanjoni’ on it) to indicate that this is THE spot for viewing canyon

In 2005, I only visited southern side of canyon in afternoon. In 2007, I decided to spend more time near canyon. First I visited the south side in a evening, north side in a night, went to sleep and visited north side again in a morning. After my hiking trip (from Ruka to Hautajärvi and from there to Sallatunturi), we made day trip to Oulanka Canyon (it is only 2km hike from nearest parking lot, which is also the reason, why there is always minimal risk involved, if you leave your hiking pack to Savilampi) and saw it afternoon. During these (four) visits to canyon, I couldn’t help noticing that if you are up there at wrong time of day, there is huge contrast between the areas that are covered by sun and areas, which are in shadows. Photograph that you saw on top of this article was taken on afternoon, when the sun was shining from right angle to bring light to the wall on opposite side of the gorge.
As always, there is more than one way to photograph this kind of magnificent landscapes and I’ve seen some beatiful photographs that have been taken in fall, where the entire gorge is filled by mist clouds. Unfortunately, I don’t have any of them bookmarked, so I can’t provide links to them.

More photographs from Oulangan Kanjoni