Hiking in the Liesjärvi National Park

My friend and I spent the last weekend of June hiking in the Liesjärvi national park. Liesjärvi is located about an hour drive from Helsinki, towards the city of Pori. Torronsuo national park is also located in the same area.

Earlier this year, I had bought a new backpack, the Bonfus Altus 48L, to replace my decade old Osprey Kestrel 58L. The Osprey has served me well in hikes from northern Norway to Finnish Lapland. However, material science advances a lot in a decade and I was looking for a lighter option.

The Altus pack is customized according to the buyer’s preferences, including the size. I opted to have almost all optional accessories included which increases the weight of the back but offers the most flexibility to different hiking scenarios. The most important features for me were the bottom stretch pocket and the shoulder strap pockets.

Arrival

We arrived to Liesjärvi on Friday afternoon by a car. While en-route, I noticed that I had forgotten my windshell at home¹. I wasn’t interested in keen on driving back home so I decided to use my rain jacket as a windshell instead.

We parked the car at the Sikomäki parking area. We were the only people there. From the parking space we started hiking to Peukalonlampi tent site for the night.

We arrived at Peukalonlampi after a short hike. The place has toilets, lean-to-shelter, camp fire site and several tent sites. The weather was warm: at 9 pm the temperature was 24°C. Sunlight was plenty even through the night.

We were thinking about swimming in the Peukalonlampi lake, but skipped it because we couldn’t find a good place to enter the water. The water also looked like it had been still for a while.

After eating evening snacks and setting up the shelters, we headed to bed. The weather forecast was predicting rain for the following morning.

First day

I woke up to heavy rain at 5 am. The shower lasted about an hour. I had trouble falling to sleep again and I stayed up until breakfast.

When we were making breakfast, I noticed that the windshell wasn’t the only thing I had forgotten: some of my food were at the car. While my friend was preparing the breakfast, I walked back to the car. There was a short pause in the rain but while I was heading back, it started to rain again.

Weather was getting clearer after the breakfast and we started hiking the Ilvesreitti hiking trail counter-clockwise.

We arrived at Siltalahti for lunch. Siltalahti has a campfire site and toilets. After eating lunch, we decided it was time to test our swimming gear and jumped to the cool waters of Tapolanjärvi.

From Siltalahti, we started hiking south towards Pirttilahti. From Pirttilahti, we did a short circular route, Hyypiön polku, with scenic view towards Tapolanjärvi. We arrived again at Pirttilahti from we started heading our final destination for the day, Savilahti.

Pirttilahti and Siltalahti are at the opposite ends of Kyynäränharju ridge, one of the unique locations of the park which divides the Kyynäräjärvi lake. Walking the ridge you can see the Kyynäräjärvi on both sides.

Savilahti was the busiest tent site of our trip. When we arrived, there were only few groups but in the evening there were some 10 tents. After eating dinner, we crashed to our beds.

Second day and departure

Our route didn’t include circular route back, so we had to return the same route we came. I didn’t mind because we got to cross the Kynääränharju ridge again.

We stopped at Siltalahti again for lunch. This was a good decision for two reasons:

1. we were able to take a quick swim in Tapolanjärvi again
2. the rest of the route was plagued by mosquitoes

We continued the Ilvesreitti counter-clockwise non-stop towards Sikomäki where our car was parked. We departed soon after and started heading towards Helsinki.

Closing thoughts

We didn’t explore the southern part of the park which includes two circular routes and the Korteniemi Heritage Farm. We also skipped Torronsuo, another national park next to Liesjärvi.

This hike wasn’t long enough to give conclusive thoughts on the Altus backpack. I like the shoulder pockets but I wish the bottom mesh pocket was bigger. I also had problems with the hip belt pockets scratching my arms. In my Osprey pack the same pockets are more slim and don’t touch my arms at all. Being more slim they cannot hold as much gear though.

We should investigate different foods to prepare: we’ve had the same menu for five hikes already. Maybe a hike that focuses on food?