This time I decided to escape the Covid-Corona-19 and the city life and do a day trip to the Talkoo mountais (Talkoovuoret) in Uurainen, near the Höytiä village.

The place actually has two nature trails to walk. One that takes trough old forest and has some stream flowing by and a cave to see. The other one takes to a shore of a lake with a bird wathing tower.

As the destination of this trip is about 45 km from Jyväskylä, I decided to travel by a car this time instead of my bicycle landtrain.

I packed my backpack with some food, cooking utensils and filled my water bottles from a spring on the way. Then double checked that I had my camera, memory card and batteries with me.

After about an hours drive I saw this fine sign pointing towards my destination on the side of the road.

After driving sometime I came to this ambiguous crossing, but drove past at first as I didn’t see any sings about Talkoo mountains nor the nature trail paths.

Couple kilometers later I was sure that I had missed the road what I was looking for and popped my GPS open, headed back and found the road and crossing that I missed at the first time.

After driving that road for some…

…I finally came to the laavu and fire place, from where the two paths start from.

The Miehinkäinen path goes at the opposite direction, towards lake Miehinkäinen…

…but I was more curious this time about the Talkoo mountains path.

The Talkoo mountains nature path leaves from the laavu and the starting point was hidden “behind” the laavu and I didn’t notice it first.

The “right” way goes clockwise and starts from the left side of the laavu.

Later as I think of it, I think the “wrong” way, counter clockwise, starting from the right side of the laavu, was a much better option. You’ll see later why.

The end, my start, starts from a wooden stairs down towards the forest.

The old stairs rests next to the current ones. Kinda nice detail to see things that have been, but replaced with new stairs.

Some parts of the forest still had some snow, but the path was easy to follow and icy only from few places.

Many parts were completely snow free and one could feel the warmth of the Sun when walking in open spots.

The path was quite easy to follow, even thou the markings had faded somewhat there and here.

Most of the info signs were still standing, thou some looked like they would need some care and love within next years to come. Texts were only in finnish, if you’re interested.

This was a bit steep way down. The only reason for walking the path clockwise direction would be that one would need to climb up this section, as climbing up slippery, icy, wet and steep parts is many times easier than trying to come down safely.

The hill was in a bit bad shape, but person with average agility should be ok with this. The lower stairs were still covered in snow and ice and I took the path next to them, not even trying my luck in those stairs.

At the bottom of the hill was a small canyon like place, with cliffs and some mountains at both sides and a stream flowing at the bottom.

They even had made a nice bench for one to sit and watch and listen the stream floating by.

After going a bit uphill, one can cross the stream via a small bridge and then find oneself at the front of the Talkoo mountains natural cave.

As everything in Finland, this cave is also small, but it qualifies as a cave. There’s even a sign saying that it is a cave, so that verifies that it is a cave on a side of a cliff.

It’s more of a pit, where at the end two or three people could just stand, but it would provide them some protection from the elements if needed.

The reason why I said earlier that I liked walking this path counter clockwise was that the first part, what should have had been the end part, was “only” some path in the forest and as a finn I’ve seen quite many paths in the forest.

But this part from the cave and the bench back to the laavu, followed the stream in the forest. And that was a nice thing, as streams like this aren’t that common, at least in the forests that I’ve wandered.

There were some trees that had fallen cause of some storm and wind. Some one needed to climb over, some one could pass under or go around.

The path followed the stream in the forest for a quite long time, before it crossed a small swamp area, still frozen solid.

The last part of the trail was easy to walk between the trees and the stream also still flowed near by.

It took about an hour to walk this trail or path around back to the laavu and fireplace.

After a nice walk in the forest one needs to eat. So one makes a fire first.

It is a nice thing that many of these laavus in Finland have firewood and many times also an axe ready for hikers and campers like me and they are free to use.

Now there are some of those lowlife individuals who steal firewood from places like this and it is a nuisance in some places and areas. But mostly finns know how to behave and they respect things that aren’t theirs or should be for everyone to use and share.

After one has fire one needs to cook some bacon. Lovely delicious bacon.

And with bacon one has some eggs and veggies (carrot, peas and cauliflower), some spices and herbs.

And the meal is ready.

With and after the meal I had some warm mate in a thermos to enjoy and sit by the fire for some.

For me the food cooked on an open flame, prepared by my own hands, always tastes so good and is both relaxing to cook and to eat.

After some chill and drinking the mate and watching the fire burn out I made some small firewood and starters for the next person to arrive to the laavu (missed an image about that). And then backed my backpack and headed back to the city.