Visiting R 154 29
This post is part of a bigger trip I made through Scandinavia with focus on Norway.
Imagine different weather
On my way find a place for the night I came across Kaunispää, my first fell (without even noticing it). A fell is a high and barren landscape. During snow season it seems to be a very nice place for skiing.
When I came the weather was just about to change. In one direction you could already see the rain coming. In the other direction there was still a semblance of good weather. One could imagine how awesome the view would be when the weather would have been better.
![In the front brown soil, in the distance forests, on the right some small houses, almost all sky is cloudy besides some light on the right](https://25x25.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/kaunispaa-view-1024x576.jpg)
The area with the closed ski lifts and the deserted apartments (again having big windows in the roof for the northern lights) made it look somehow unreal. Almost like a lost place. How beautiful it would be in the winter.
![Ski lift with blue seats above brownish gras, gray sky](https://25x25.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/kaunispaa-lift-1024x576.jpg)
![Ski lift in the winter, a lot of snow, blue sky, sunset or sunrise](https://25x25.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Kaunispaan_lasketteluhissi-1024x576.jpg)
Birit Schenk (Birit), CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia Commons
Well, all that I had at this point was a lot of wind and rain to come. Not the best condition for a nice stay. However, in the summer and with different weather it must be a great place to go for a hike.
Imagine triangles
You are already at the top of a mountain like area and the view is stunning.
![View into the distance, forests on small hills until the horizon, the more distant, the more foggy](https://25x25.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/kaunispaa-view2-1024x576.jpg)
And then you see a small wooden lookout. That seems a little odd. Why would you need something like this here?
Reason is that this used to be a triangulation point for a triangulation network. Those helped to create maps of the country. When you try to measure a distance it can get quite complicated depending on the terrain. Measuring angles can be easier. In this case all you need is one line of a triangle with a known length. And from here you go and get a mesh of triangles. The tower here was one of the corners of such triangles that spread all across the country.
I always wondered how people were able to create accurate maps if they were not able to look at the land from above. Now I knew.
The original tower is gone. It was not needed any longer as satellites took over and it started to decay. This new lookout was built as a memorial in 2011.
Some travel tips (from 2021)
- There is a restaurant/café on top of the mountain that you can have a bite in case you stay around longer.
- In the summer when there is not much going on it seems to be ok to stay here overnight. Just don’t park directly in front of the restaurant. I didn’t stay due to the wind and weather, so I can’t say anything about how it would be. I assume it must have been a really nice view as in the evening I had a stunning sunset nearby (but the weather got very bad at night night, so still happy that I left).
![Burning red sky with some clouds, silhouette of trees, camper van to the left](https://25x25.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/kaunispaa-nearby-1024x576.jpg)