The First of May Celebration

On First of May eve, people gather to celebrate spring in the so-called at normal time (without covid). The eve of our First of May began with remote working and we had plans in the evening to climb the Kellostapuli to celebrate the beginning of May. The weather was frosty even during the day, so we left the planned picnic lunches and drinks waiting for the next time. We just packed snowshoes and warm juice with. We also left out the planned sparkling wine because we drove by car to the Y1 car parking place.

We walked along the snow trails to Varkaankuru first and from there towards Kiirunakieppi and the from there we continued along the path towards Kellostapuli. Frost and wind had hardened the mountain slope, and we hiked on foot. It was the final stage when we put on snowshoes on and we would have reached up even without snowshoes.

The trip from Varkaankuru to the top of Kellostapuli is not very long, so we arrived quite quickly, just before 6 pm. The 6 pm is the "official" start time of First of May celebration in Finland and it is done, e.g in Helsinki near the statue of Havis Amanda, and tens of thousands of students normally take part in this. This year, because of the covid, no gathering was allowed to be done.

Instead, at the top of Kellostapuli there were just two of us and there we sat and admired the beautiful mountain scenery. I stated that the fells have very good safety distances at least and we felt very safe 😊

This kind of celebration was especially pleased to us, with great views of the fells and no worries about the covid. We decided to come back to Kellostapuli for the First of May celebration next year. Then we should have picnic and missed sparkling wine, too.