Hiking the Kaakkurinkierros route at Repovesi National Park, Finland

Surprise! I have arrived back to Finland. I have finished my internship in Sweden and returned to Helsinki. A lot of changes are happening in my life, but I'll write more about them later. Right now I want to let you know about my 3-day trip to Repovesi National Park with my flatmate. We hiked Kaakkurinkierros - a 26 km route and enjoyed every min... well, most of it!

Preparations

The lifelong questions: How many undies you have to pack for a weekend long trip? How many pairs of socks? What if I suddenly fall in to the lake several times during the trip or pour some blueberry juice on myself, so I need to change pants? We ended up deciding less is more, and even still a couple of hours before leaving I took stuff out of my backpack to make it lighter.

We both had planned to go hiking at Repovesi for a long time. Both had made these plans on their own, so when we found out about the desire to do so, we ended up checking the calendar, booking a weekend and deciding to make the plan into action together. Just a few days before the trip we started wondering what things we are still missing since neither of us are people good with early preparations. My roommate bought herself a brand new cooker and got us tarps to cover us during the night in case it got very windy or rainy. We bought rope, went to get groceries and on the last evening we packed our backpacks.

First day at Repovesi National Park - From Lapinsalmi to Kuutinkanava (5 km)

We started our trip on Friday by driving from Helsinki to Kouvola and Repovesi. It took about 3 hours that included a short stop to get fuel for the car and ourselves. There are three parking spots at Repovesi to leave your car at, and from our short and fast research of the route we ended up deciding to start walking from Lapinsalmi.

We started walking the Kaakkurinkierros route at 6 pm, climbed up the stairs to Katajavuori scenic spot, enjoyed the views for a while and continued our way along the lake to Kuutinkanava camping spot. We only walked 5 km during the first evening since it had been a while neither of us had done anything related to camping or walking long distances in a rough terrain with a backpack full of stuff. We found a great spot for two hammocks from Kuutinkanava, made some dinner and went to bed around 23 pm. On the first evening it took us some time to build our campsite as it had been a while. We had bought ourselves some foam rubber to put between the tree bark and the ropes of the hammocks to make sure the trees didn't suffer from it.

We also chose our camping spots based on the facts that they had a dry toilet and a well for fresh water. We had approximately 3 litres of water with us all the time since the days were hot and sunny and the hiking routes quite challenging. But you can find many wells on the route so just remember to fill up your water bottles every time you get the change.

Second day at Repovesi National Park - From Kuutinkanava to Talas (18 km)

The night was cooler but still warm and the only problem during the night was that the first day-hikers arrived to the park already in the break of dawn at 5 am and made quite a lot of noise which woke me up. Didn't let it bother me too much though since I fell back to sleep quite fast after. We enjoyed a relaxed morning, made some breakfast and started walking our first few kilometres around 10.30 am.

We filled our water bottles at Olhava but continued to Karhulahti for a lunch break. We weren't the only ones, which was good, since my flatmates backpack had started to act up and was breaking from the other strap. We borrowed some almighty duct tape from other hikers and continued our way to Korpinkierros route and the beautiful sights from Olhavanvuori.

It took us around 3 hours to get to our next stop at Sukeltajaniemi camp-fire place to enjoy some coffee and a snack after walking around 8,4 km. At this point we started to already be quite exhausted from the heat and walking, though we had enjoyed all of it very much. 8,4 km isn't much but with the warmth of the day and the terrain with backpacks was definitely taking its toll. We continued our way on Kaakkurinkierros and filled our water bottles close to Saarijärvi parking lot. We decided to skip the small route going to Kirnukangas and continued our way straight to our planned camping site at Lojukoski. At this point we had walked and enjoyed the nature for 13 km.

After cooking dinner and relaxing for a while we had a talk and we both agreed that as it was still bright at 6 pm, it was getting cooler and we had some energy in us again, we should still keep walking. We had planned to stay at Lojukoski for the second night but the thought of making the last hiking day a bit easier for both of us, plus getting to see the beautiful camp site at Talas, was decided to to continue on. And it was definitely worth it! Sidenote: Talas doesn't have a well, so we filled all of our bottles to make sure we had enough water for the rest of the day and for the next morning as well.

This beautiful spot was our camp site at Talas. When we arrived we arranged our stuff, hanged our hammocks and started making delicious oat pancakes with sugar-free strawberry jam on the side. It took us a moment to get the pancakes to look as beautiful as they do in the pictures below but nevertheless they all tasted as good. We took a swim and enjoyed our second evening in the nature.

The night was extremely warm and I woke up in the early hours next morning just to get myself out of the sleeping bag.

Third Day at Repovesi National Park - From Talas to Lapinsalmi (3,2 km)

We started the second morning very slow again. We were in no hurry now that we didn't have many km left on the route. We made some coffee and oat porridge for breakfast, slowly got ourselves together and started our last leg of the route.

One of the best bits was still to come, since just under 1 km before the end of the route we hopped on a self-controlled ferry (or a raft) and pulled ourselves over the strait to the other side. It needed some muscles but we gladly did this upper body work-out as well.

We had discussed for some while that if the small kiosk at Lapinsalmi was open when we arrived, we would enjoy some well-deserved ice cream - and we did! Our great hike in great company came to an perfect end when sitting at the parking lot enjoying a melting ice cream.

In the end the route was a bit more difficult than we had expected as it had a lot of uphills and downhills as well as pretty rough terrain, but we enjoyed it. Good route of 26 km to hike if you have around 3 days to spend on it. 4 if you want to take is easy. As I told before, there are three different spots to start the hike, and you can always just do parts of it, so I highly recommend Repovesi National Park if you want to see some nature for a few hours or a day.

Me and my flatmate took a lot of videos of the beautiful sights and nature as well - though because one of us was always talking nonsense (or maybe cursing a little, when suddenly my sleeping pad decided to jump off the wagon and tried to make a run for it) during the other one was filming, we had to remove the sounds, but you can find some videos of this beautiful route from Nomadoreworld TikTok-channel.