Welcome to Haukkakallio

(Haukkallio welcoming the author. The admission fee is paid in skin and blood. Thanks to Toni J. for the photo)

This blog seemed like the quickest and easiest way to get some information on climbing on the newly developed Haukkakallio crag near Ruotsinpyhtää in south eastern Finland to the widest possible number of interested fellow climbers. Myself and a group of Helsinki-based friends have been involved in cleaning and new routing at the crag since the Släbi Club from Kotka put out a call for help in early May 06. When Jody and I turned up on the saturday chosen we were amazed to see the organised cleaning effort centred around a fire hose borrowed from a local fire brigade!


A note on grades: currently, my friends and I are giving trad routes that we have climbed Finnish grades as we are more familiar with this system than with French grades. British grades are also given in brackets just for fun. It is, once you know how the system works, the best grade system in the world for trad climbs. If you don't know how it works, it is ridiculously complicated and pointlessly opaque - please feel free to ignore them! The sports routes will be of course graded with French grades.

All the photos on this site are clickable - click on them for a bigger more detailed version.