20th-21st Jan, Our "expedition" through Iso Syote National Park!

At 6am, on 20th January we left for a 2day hike through Iso Syote National Park. The hiking team consisted of Marko (Austrian/Slovenian), Daniel (German), Me (Saffie), Wolfie (Austrian) and Paul (Australian).
We started our hike at about 9:30am and the temperature was a mild -8 degrees.
We hiked until lunch time then stopped at a big log cabin for lunch. We were starving and feasted on bread, ham, cheese and hot fruit tea (with loads of added sugar for extra energy!) The cabin was icy cold inside and so we didn't stay for too long...
...from the cabin we hiked through knee deep snow...it is an amazing site seeing so much snow everywhere...the hike was tough as there was no established path through the snow so we had to trek through the deep snow and make our own path...
After about 5hrs of hiking through knee deep snow we finally reached our cabin...it took much longer than expected. We averaged about 1.5km per hour because of the deep snow and were tired and hungry and relieved to get to the cabin. The last 2 hrs we hiked in the dark as the sun had set but luckily we were well equipped with headlamps and torches. We quickly lit a fire in the cabin to warm up.. Before dinner we feasted on biscuits, salami and cheese...Marko invented a "Choc-biscuit-salami-cheese" combo, which him and me ended up eating the rest of the time before dinner. It is a really good combination...hard to believe, i know...but try it! Wolfie and Daniel were not convinced and stuck to the non-combo biscuit...Then later on we feasted on pasta with pesto! We were to find out after our return to Oulu, that it was -28 degrees that evening! In the cabin we slept on "comfy" wooden planks.

Day 2: We started our hike with a beautiful sunrise...but it was an icy cold -24 degrees and our faces were frozen as we hiked...all the hairs sticking out from my beanie were white and even my scarf was frozen! We hiked for most of the day and at sunset we arrived back at the ski center where we all enjoyed and gulped down 2/3 cups of hot chocolate! We were all sad to leave beautiful Iso syote but were eager to get back for dinner as we were starving by the end of our hike!

We decided to go out for pizza when we got back to Oulu, at a pizzeria (called Babel) about 3min walk from out apartment. Everyone else, who didnt go on the hike joined us for pizza to hear how our hike was. This pizzeria makes THE biggest pizza's I have ever seen, and I ate up all of it becuase I was so hungry! So finally with full satisfied tummy's we all fell into bed for a much deserved sleep!