The route
A rather flat country, Finland has not been associated with rock climbing. In fact, it has no entry in the usually-thorough
Mountain Project database. Recently, perhaps because one of the world's best
boulderers is a Finn, the country has become somewhat known for bouldering, and has a candidate for the
world's hardest boulder problem. But its route climbing is obscure.
Olhava, about two hours north-east of the capital, Helsinki, is the best-known (or least-unknown!) area. The king line of the cliff is Kantti, a sharp 50m arete, rising straight out of a lake. The grade is Finnish 6- or about mid-5.10.
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| Unknown climber starting up Kanti |
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| And higher on the route |
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| I am soloing low on the route to give scale - Toby took the photo from the boat |
The context
After our successful
Lofoten trip in 2002, visiting Toby in Helsinki to check out Finnish climbing seemed an obvious idea. A rough plan set for June 2003 eventually morphed into a family holiday, with Shoko, Leo and I flying there accompanied by Shoko's sister Tomoko and her mum Reiko. They entertained themselves taking a ferry to the fabulous medieval town of
Talinn in Estonia, which I also joined, and a train to
Moominworld, which I regretted not being able to join as the deeply-weird Moomin books were a big feature of my childhood.
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| Leo, Tomoko and the Baltic sea, Talinn harbour |
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| Talinn skyline |
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| Obligatory post-soviet graffiti photo |
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| Drunk Japanese women in Talinn |
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| Russian Orthodox church, Talinn |
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| Moominbus to Moominworld |
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| Leo's granny guarding him from Sniff |
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| Leo with Nokia phones, back when that Finnish company had not yet been crushed by Apple |
The ascent
Meanwhile Toby drove me out to Olhava for a two day stay. The diary noted the scenery as "
forest and tractors" and that the hike in to the climbing area with camping gear was "
quite long". It also started drizzling with rain when we arrived. This was disappointing as Toby had already described Kantti to me as The Finnish Classic and I was psyched to climb it.
Paranoid that it would rain for our whole stay I decided to get on the route straight away. A quirky feature of Olhava is that some routes have to be approached on a rowboat. We duly rowed across and tied the boat up to a convenient belay island. The route did prove to be fantastic and just runout enough to be exciting. The diary states that the "penultimate move was scary as very wet on slopers" - which I don't recall, so it can't have been that bad. I do remember crisp edges with reassuring texture, vaguely reminiscent of the granite in Cornwall. Though the line follows an arete there were few pure arete layback type moves, which was a relief as I have never been good at that technique. Through beer-goggles that evening I even raised the idea of doing the route purely on cams, but forgot about it in the morning. Probably a good thing.
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| Olhava campground by the lake |
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| Finns expressing their love of climbing and barbecue |
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| Toby belaying me on a great splitter crack route next to Kantti |
Subsequent ascents
I have not been back to Finland.
