I went for a walk yesterday out to a small café located on an island (Måsskär) about 10 or 15km’s outside of Pietarsaari. This doesn’t sound that out of the ordinary I know. The bit that makes it worth writing about was that there is no bridge out to this island, yet I still walked the out there.
I drove around to the fishing Harbour and after having a quick look at the fishing boats sitting in the snow I found the small sign pointing to the island. There is also a sign right next to it advertising a snowmobile taxi to get you there, but I wanted to walk. The path is well marked with snow poles drilled into the ice about every 50-100m so once you have the starting point it is not hard to follow. This was the first time I’d been out on the ice so I was a little nervous.
At the shoreline there is a couple of metres of slush about 50mm deep because the ice is cracked at the shore. This is of course due to the fact that unless the water freezes completely the tide will still move the layer of ice up and down (a little). So after talking myself into believing that this was the case I continued to follow the snow poles further onto the big expanse of white (I did let a group of four people go first though). It is about 2km over the ice out to the island in almost a straight line. In one place there were rocks sticking out of the Ice I passed a number of fishing/buoys. Once or twice there was a big Ice block sitting near the path which was obviously a sample cut from the shelf and showed that the ice was about half a meter thick.
I made it to the Café by 1330 and had a relatively cheap lunch followed by a ‘Pig’ and a Coffee which was recommended as a specialty by the owners. The Pig was basically a Jam donut but shaped kind of differently. I learned that the building was originally constructed in the 50’s as a pilot house and the space used for the café was originally used by the coast guard. The Café was decorated with some old marine navigational equipment, including some replica Viking instruments which were very clever. On one wall there were a number of charts of the surrounding waters, and another wall housed a bit of a shrine to the building, filled with newspaper articles about it’s construction and life. Some interesting photos showed a small truck being pulled from a hole in the ice in apparently 10m deep water. The truck hit a soft patch and fell through loaded with sand while the were building the pilot house. They managed to construct a big frame on the ice and winch the truck back out within a day or two.
I had a quick look around on the island before I then walked back to the Car. I turned on the GPS a bit after I was back on the ice, the red line in the image is pretty much all on the ice.
The yellow line is a ride I did on the mountain bike last week, about 50% of which was on snow mobile tracks or single track (which is very tricking in thick snow). That was allot of fun. The blue line is a ride I did today, we were only riding on the roads today though as the snow on the tracks would have been too soft to get anywhere. It didn’t rain at all but we got very wet, we went a little further than last week and ended up doing over 60km. I expect to be a bit sore tomorrow.
I drove around to the fishing Harbour and after having a quick look at the fishing boats sitting in the snow I found the small sign pointing to the island. There is also a sign right next to it advertising a snowmobile taxi to get you there, but I wanted to walk. The path is well marked with snow poles drilled into the ice about every 50-100m so once you have the starting point it is not hard to follow. This was the first time I’d been out on the ice so I was a little nervous.
At the shoreline there is a couple of metres of slush about 50mm deep because the ice is cracked at the shore. This is of course due to the fact that unless the water freezes completely the tide will still move the layer of ice up and down (a little). So after talking myself into believing that this was the case I continued to follow the snow poles further onto the big expanse of white (I did let a group of four people go first though). It is about 2km over the ice out to the island in almost a straight line. In one place there were rocks sticking out of the Ice I passed a number of fishing/buoys. Once or twice there was a big Ice block sitting near the path which was obviously a sample cut from the shelf and showed that the ice was about half a meter thick.
I made it to the Café by 1330 and had a relatively cheap lunch followed by a ‘Pig’ and a Coffee which was recommended as a specialty by the owners. The Pig was basically a Jam donut but shaped kind of differently. I learned that the building was originally constructed in the 50’s as a pilot house and the space used for the café was originally used by the coast guard. The Café was decorated with some old marine navigational equipment, including some replica Viking instruments which were very clever. On one wall there were a number of charts of the surrounding waters, and another wall housed a bit of a shrine to the building, filled with newspaper articles about it’s construction and life. Some interesting photos showed a small truck being pulled from a hole in the ice in apparently 10m deep water. The truck hit a soft patch and fell through loaded with sand while the were building the pilot house. They managed to construct a big frame on the ice and winch the truck back out within a day or two.
I had a quick look around on the island before I then walked back to the Car. I turned on the GPS a bit after I was back on the ice, the red line in the image is pretty much all on the ice.
The yellow line is a ride I did on the mountain bike last week, about 50% of which was on snow mobile tracks or single track (which is very tricking in thick snow). That was allot of fun. The blue line is a ride I did today, we were only riding on the roads today though as the snow on the tracks would have been too soft to get anywhere. It didn’t rain at all but we got very wet, we went a little further than last week and ended up doing over 60km. I expect to be a bit sore tomorrow.
3 comments:
Happy birthday dude. Don't fall through the ice. How long till it thaws?
Thanks mate,
It's now thawing during the day quicker than it's freezing overnight. It depends if the weather stays like it is or gets cold again. It could be back to water by the start of April though. I was lucky to go to the Cafe last week as they are not going to open this weekend due to possible concerns about the ice thickness.
Perfect time to test the ice-breaker foiling moth. Surely you've thought about it...
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