Last summer, I made my annual trip to Finland and had the opportunity to explore a new hiking trail, this time across the mires of Siikaneva. I find the mires of Finland both fascinating and beautiful, and wetlands generally to be underappreciated. So when I was asked where I’d like to hike, and I had the choice of a mire or forest, I picked this.
Siikaneva Wetlands Preserve
The preserve is the largest contiguous mire and conservation area in the Pirkanmaa region. It’s located in the municipality of Ruovesi, same as Helvetinjärvi National Park, where I hiked the summer before. (You can view my post on that here.) The park is located about three hours from Helsinki and just over an hour away from Tampere.
Hiking the Siikaneva Loop
In Finnish, this trail is called “Siikanevan kierros,” (Siikaneva’s Loop) and it’s marked with blue circles on the sign posts and blue paint on some trees along the trail. It’s 10 km (6.2 miles) in total. There’s a lot of walking along duckboards over the mire, interspersed with forested islands. There’s one spot where we climbed up a hill to a campfire site, where there was also an outhouse and lean-to shelter, as well as a nice view over the wetlands.
We hiked this loop at the end of August, and after the rains of summer, there was an abundance of mushrooms – really, just an insane number of mushrooms. Sadly, we were not familiar enough with the mushrooms of Finland to know which, if any, were edible, so we didn’t pick any, but if we were naturalists, we probably could have carried away our supper. We also saw cloudberries in the mires, though not too many.
Some of the duckboards were a bit worn out, so we definitely had to be careful crossing the mire. To take pictures or admire the scenery, we had to stop or else we’d miss our step and fall off. The hike is deceptively easy because even though it’s not physically strenuous, we really had to pay attention!
I fell into something like a trance on the second part of this hike, after we left the campfire site atop the hill. It was just continuous mire-forest-mire-forest, and it really put me into a meditative state. The hike seemed endless, but in a good way?
Other Hikes Nearby
Pikkulatosaaren kierros – This 2.8-km (1.7-mile) loop begins at the same trailhead as the longer loop. It gives you a hint of the open bogs and pine forests, with a campfire site along the way.
