Jouni Laaksonen 24.2.2020
I started this blog just over two years ago, and this is my one hundredth blog post. Thank you for all the follows, likes and views!
I don’t really know much about blogging. I may very well be wrong, but I’m under assumption that often the newest post or two are being read, and the older posts are buried deeper and almost forgotten. Or is it so?
If I am even close to being right, my blog is a bit different in this aspect. When I started this I hoped the blog would grow into kind of a database about hiking in Finland, and to some extent that seems to be the case. Of course the newest article is often read, but also many older posts are viewed every day. Typically something like 20 different blog articles are read each day.
My top 10 posts (according to views) so far are:
- Hiking 100 km in 24 hours
- Long distance hiking
- Guidebook Hiking in Finland
- Hiking in Finland: Tips for a beginner
- Gear review: Merino t-shirts
- Map apps
- Animal tracks in Lapland
- Ski touring at -50°C = -60°F
- How to behave in a wilderness hut
- Hiking 127 km without sleeping
So, thank you for reading!
Lately I’ve noticed I don’t have enough time and energy to write a new blog post every Monday. One post every second Monday is more probable from now on. There’s still a huge lot to tell about hiking in Finland! 🙂
New books
I’m thankfully busy with book projects. For my international readers these books don’t offer much, because they are in Finnish. My only book in English remains to be Hiking in Finland – Day Trips and Backpacking Expeditions (2019).
However, here are the front covers of my two new books that are going to be published in March and April.
Kiilopään retkeilyopas is not only a book, but it is a combination of a guidebook and outdoor map. This is the cover of the whole combination…
…and this is the front cover of the book.
Kiilopään retkeilyopas (publisher Calazo) describes in close detail one of the greatest day hiking and multi-day backpacking areas in Finland: the northern part of Urho Kekkonen National Park. And more to the point, this package that includes both a book and an outdoors map, concentrates in starting your hike at Suomen Latu Kiilopää, which I deem the best place to start your hike into this huge national park.
I’ve been in love with this wild national park for decades. Even after dozens of hikes there are always new paths or pathless routes to select, new gorges to be found, new seasons to see.
Pohjois-Suomen vaellusreitit (publisher Minerva) on the other hand is a larger book that describes all the good marked hiking trails in Northern Finland. I describe 23 hiking trails in detail, and when you count all the variations I mention, there are over 50 hikes in the book. There are eight great hiking trails suitable for 2 to 4 days mini hikes, there are the top 6 of Finland’s week long hiking trails, and many other trails suitable for a week or so.
This book is intended both for
- a day hiker who is thinking she/he would like to try multi-day hiking (you can do really cool hikes outside trails in Finland, but it’s best to start multi-day hiking along marked trails)
- and an experienced hiker who may know the most popular trails well, but probably hasn’t hiked all the northern trails yet.
So, these are what I’ve been working with for the last year or so. Both books are in layout phase now, and I’ve already done a lot of proofreading. If you are interested, visit my other book page www.iki.fi/jel (only Finnish language) in the spring. Once the books are published, I’ll add example pages and more information there. Well, maybe here too, let’s see. 🙂
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Next blog post will finally be continuation to my series on the reasons behind wilderness huts.
Finnish Way of Hiking 