Snowshoe Walking in Finnish Lapland

During my white Christmas stay in Rovaniemi in Finnish Lapland, I really wanted to get out into the snowy landscape without the roar of a snowmobile. It was thus I turned to the Arctic Safari company to take me on a snowshoe walking day, out in the forest with no civilization in sight. And it was indeed a beautifully peaceful day.

We began at around sunrise - but this being winter solstice time, this was ten o'clock in the morning in Rovaniemi. At the tour company base in town, I changed into the supplied thermal suit and boots that should protect me against the well-below-freezing temperatures of around -20 Celsius. Interestingly, children under 12 weren't permitted on a snowshoe walk, which ruled out many of the families staying at my hotel. As a result I found myself out in a white forest with our Finnish guide and five other Australians, all copying my idea of having a really, really white Christmas.

After a half hour drive deep into the forest (or so it felt, since the thick covering of snow made everything seem very distant), our guide had us pile out of the van and he let us all choose our pair of snowshoes. They were much more hi-tech than I'd imagined, and all of us needed a little bit of coaching in how to attach them correctly to our feet. With just a few words of coaching and a "Let's go!", we set off in a line down a small hill.

Snowshoe walking looked easy, but we soon found it wasn't. Within the first five minutes, I think each member of the group had fallen over at least once, and then some of us were laughing so hard that we couldn't take another step. But we did, eventually, and soon got the hang of lifting our giant snowshoes out of the snow, keeping our knees high and placing the shoe down again without stepping on the front of the other shoe. The snow was deep and powder fresh, so we sank up to our knees on most steps.

After an hour or so of a beautiful walk through snow laden trees, our guide stopped us and handed out a cup of hot chocolate and a biscuit for everyone. Without our constant giggling or the puffing and panting that went with walking, the forest seemed deathly silent. It was probably the most peaceful place I've ever visited on earth, and I didn't really want to disturb the silence again.

For the rest of the daylight hours (it got quite dark again by two o'clock in the afternoon), our guide left us to explore the forest and improve our snowshoe walking ability. When dusk hit, we all snapped off our snowshoes back at the van and found it extremely strange to be walking around in normal shoes again. We drove back to Rovaniemi and found a good meal and a hot drink to put a nice end to a peacefully active day.