The red walls
Sandstone confining the river to a narrow gorge.
Jochen.wurster — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Ninara — CC BY 2.0 · Ninara — CC BY 2.0 · Ximonic (Simo Räsänen) — CC BY-SA 3.0
Almost every Finnish national park has a visitor centre run by the forest service, **and entry is free**. It holds an exhibition on the area's nature and history, free paper maps, and staff who actually know the state of the trails — which is the important part: they will tell you if a bridge is shut, a path is underwater or the snow is heavy. There are usually toilets, a café and a water point. **Always start a trip at one**, particularly in Lapland where phone coverage is patchy and online information may be out of date.
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Kiutaköngäs is Finland's best-known rapids, at the heart of Oulanka National Park — and the picture you see in every guide to Finnish nature is most likely this one. The Oulanka river narrows here between **two walls of red sandstone** and drops fourteen metres over a short distance, turning to churning white between red rock and pine forest. The contrast of red, white and dark green is what makes the place visually distinctive. The sandstone here is more than a billion years old, among the oldest rock exposed at the surface in Finland. **Access is unusually easy for a place this beautiful**: the Oulanka visitor centre is about a kilometre and a half away, and a made level path leads to a viewpoint above the rapids — suitable for families and, in part, for pushchairs. **About 200 km from Rovaniemi**, within an Oulanka trip. Free and always open.
Sandstone confining the river to a narrow gorge.
A made kilometre and a half from the visitor centre.
Oulanka National Park, Kuusamo