Christmas walk

This year I decided that I just want to have some piece of mind during Christmas and decided to take small hike. Initial idea was to start on 24th of December, but for some reason I had small fever, which went away during the day itself. Most likely I just needed some rest.
I've got a good hiking bag and sleeping bag from my friend, also mess kit. So my bag contained:

• Sleeping bag
• Mess kit
• 2 pair of woolen sock
• 2 pair of sport socks
• 2 shirts
• Additional sweater
• 5 liters of water
• Gift - a one sparkling wine from Veinimäe Talu
• Gift - One Tanker craft beer Hallucination  from Satiir
• Small ax
• My hunting knife
• 450g of pork
• One Hawaiian casserole dry mix
• Few candles
• Some hygiene equipment, matches, old newspapers and toilet paper.
• 10'000 mha battery bank

On the morning of 25th of December I got up at 8 in the morning and had to catch a bus to get to Tartu and then from there to train to get to Põlva. I was so lucky that it took bit more time to dress-up in the morning and bus was bit early. Missed that bus.

Walked back indoors, took my rain-boots, jacket, snowboarding pants off and waited an hour. This time I was bit earlier and got to the bus which got to Tartu Bus Station 3 minutes before bus to Põlva took off. According to schedule the bus actually should have been arrived at the same time when the next one deployed.

My day started at 8 am and I got to Põlva at 11:20 am. Lost few hours. Põlva itself is a very nice city. I really loved the park in city center, haven't seen outdoor boxing bag before, in here, in Estonia.
Also they had a clubhouse and one statue made for accordion player.

Hiked from Põlva to correct direction, initially I planned to walk from train station but life turned out else and started from bus station, it meant that I walked parallel route. The road was slippery and basically nothing to see, unfortunately. The most thrilling place was Süvahaava, where it was 12% of decent and then 13% of accent. River was still flowing.




After Süvahaava the road took me to a place where the snow was not plowed, it was knee deep. Turned out that it was forest trail what was suitable for summer. I quite often thought that I will cut some spruce branches and sleep there. Also it turned dark. I had flashlight but retinal rod photoreceptors in eye will adjust in the dark around 30-40 minutes, I had my bets on that.


2+ hours of hiking in the dark, snow was slowing me down, I kept going. Finally thought that now I am out of the woods then I still had one hour to go. It was around 6 p.m. in the evening. I was seriously thinking wtf I am doing why and hoped secretly that I was the only one who was in the cabin.


Finally I got there, then I saw that around 20 candles were lit and one couple was trying to make some tea outside on the grill spot. Since it was public ground then we all went inside. I still think that I ruined their romantic getaway. We had some sparkling wine, shisha and then I left them alone. So much for my alone in the forest alone trip. I put on my noise canceling headphones and watched some TV shows in the sleeping bag.

They left around 9 a.m. in the morning, I bathed myself with some snow, made some fire while in my trousers and 4 people came in while I was doing breakfast. I quickly put on some clothes and they
were sweet, offered some tea, also the couple in the evening offered some mulled wine. It was sweet.

After the company left my friend picked me up and took me to his cottage home in Ruusmäe. His parents and grandma was there and they welcomed me with open arms and I had pleasant stay there almost 2 days until we got on bus with Mihkel in Võru and got back to Tartu.





Now planning for next hike, it was actually very challenging and got some good tips for next trip.

1. No need to take so many clothes for change
2. No need for so much water, nature is there, boil snow if needed
3. Try to avoid deep snow
4. Try to avoid the dark unless it is clear night when stars and moon is out
5. Take your watch charger

 The route and rest of the pictures: