The white tree plateau
Strange forms across the whole slope.
Harrim — CC BY-SA 3.0 · WiPhi267 — CC BY-SA 4.0 · WiPhi267 — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Nathan Lemon processrepeat — CC0
**The season runs September to March** — it needs a dark night, so there is no aurora during the midnight-sun summer. At Rovaniemi the lights are visible on roughly **a hundred and fifty nights a year**, that is one night in two if the sky is clear. The main obstacle is not solar activity but **cloud**. To succeed: get away from town lights, watch the cloud forecast and the Kp index, and allow yourself **at least three or four nights** rather than one. Organised tours improve the odds because they chase clear sky across tens of kilometres. **Nobody can guarantee it** — be wary of anyone who promises.
Sign in to write your review of this place.
No reviews yet — be the first.
Riisitunturi National Park lies east of Rovaniemi, and is known for one sight nothing else resembles: **the snow trees**. In winter, enormous masses of snow build up on the spruces — tykkylumi in Finnish — until the tree disappears beneath them and becomes a strange white form: ghosts, arches and stooping creatures across the whole plateau. This happens at Riisitunturi more than anywhere in Finland because of the humidity and the height of the hills, and its trees are among the most photographed in the north. The park also has hanging bogs on its slopes — a rare formation — old-growth forest, and marked paths, the best known the four-kilometre Riisi-tunturi route to the summit. **The season is everything**: the snow trees form from December, peak in **February and March**, and melt in April. In summer the park is beautiful but it is an ordinary park. **About 130 km from Rovaniemi** and it needs a car. Free.
Strange forms across the whole slope.
A rare formation on the hillsides.
Posio, southern Lapland