Riisitunturi National Park

Riisitunturi National Park represents the fell and hill landscape of Koillismaa district at its best. The most valuable features of Riisitunturi Fell are the colourful hanging bogs on the slopes, and on the top of the fell the breath-taking scenery over the Lakes Kitkajärvet and the forest landscape of Posio. Riisitunturi National Park has some of the finest sloping bogs anywhere in Europe. In winter the spruce trees that cover many of Riisitunturi National Park’s hillsides are clad with a thick coating of condensed frost, creating a photogenic white forest. Enticing trails suitable for day-trips or longer treks welcome hikers in summer and snowshoe trekkers in winter.

When visitors take a breather while ascending the day trail towards the summit of the Riisitunturi Fell and look back, they immediately realise that, above all, Posio’s Riisitunturi is a scenic national park. In the east, they can see the wide, open Lake Yli-Kitka and beyond it, the blueish slopes of Kuusamo’s Ruka Fell. The Riisitunturi area is located at the highest elevation in the watershed between the Bay of Bothnia and the White Sea. The nearly treeless summits of the twin top formed by Riisitunturi and Pikku Riisitunturi are the highest of several peaks that rise over 400 meters above the sea level.

The natural inhabitants of the northern taiga forest, such as bears and lynxes, have close to a hundred square kilometres of space to roam without running into people. These predators generally avoid people, but luckily not all of the area’s wild animals are as shy. The millennia-old forest and the humid climate have made the Riisitunturi area a northern paradise for both small and large animals. Generations of trees have grown and fallen, turned temporarily into growth platforms for mosses and lichens, fungi and insects until finally decomposing into nutrients following the circle of life.