Since I decided to tent this night, the sun wakes me up way to early (5am) by turning my tent into an oven.
I try to get at least a bit more sleep but at one point it just gets too hot and I pitch down my tent and store everything in my pack liner (a rubish bag).
This package I store in the swedish guys tent, since we ascend the Halti today together and leave unneaded stuff here.
The path up to Halti is according to my maps 6.3km long. The signs say 12km and my gps (record interval 60s) says ~10km. I really don’t know who’s right on that one, but it takes longer then expected.
The path ascends steadily on an easy route until the last few kilometer where it winds up to the top in tight serpentines over some smaller and bigger boulders.
We see one Lemming running away from us, but the moment is too quickly gone to be captured in a photo 🙁
At the peak yellow cairns mark the international boarder between Finnland and Norway.
The Finsh peak is really nothing special.
It’s just a letterbox with a summit book in it right next to the boarder, which gives you the impression of having achieved something great.
My number is 197.248 or something like that 😀 Unfortunately I didn’t write it down and now – about a week later – I can’t remember it anymore for certain.
We don’t stay long at the highest point of Finnland and proceed 30m further to enjoy the view from the norwegian peak.
The descend is a lot quicker and about 5 hours after we started our Halti trip we are back in the “base camp”.
While cooking pasta and sharing some stories with my new swedish friends from Malmö inside the hut to escape the sun a newzealand women with a selfmade cuben fiber backpack stops by. She asks for the hut book, singns it, eats two cookies and is gone again as fast as she came.
Ihaven’t seen any other “thru hiker” so far, so I decide to catch her.
I pack everything together and hike along the river to Mekonjärvi.
On the way I enjoy a quick swim, because the sun is still burning down strong.
When I arive in the free Mekonjärvi hut, where find her and two finish guys cooking dinner.
We talk about the Te Araroa and the finish guys observe our gear.
Because it’s super hot in the hut i tent in front of it!