Nikolaos and Kirsi Joined a Team Exploration in Kitee

GTK Summer Trainees Nikolaos Karampelas and Kirsi Pääkkönen spent summer days in Kitee and Outokumpu for a team exploration project. Their photo diary shows great geological findings in the sunny Finnish forests.

 

Rock and compass - geological specimen
There is a beautiful Beryl crystal on this pegmatite outcrop! Can you find it?

Summer trainees in a forest wearing bright shirts

Imagine being a GTK official and these 2 weird people promise to do the summer exploration for you.

Rock in hand - geological specimen

I know it is pegmatite but doesn’t it look like Stracciatella ice cream?

Summer trainee woman in a forest

Kirsi is without a doubt the best colleague and the most skilled navigator I could ever ask for! Here she is finding the route to the next outcrop, right after we finished collecting the data for this one.

Finnish forest, sun shining through trees
Finnish forests are amazing. The way to the pegmatite outcrops always gives us something special to make us wonder.

Wild srawberries in a bush

It can even be OK to forget your lunch at home, there are enough strawberries for a grown man to get full.

Man in an orange shirt spreads arms in forest

Sometimes you spend a full hour walking in the scorching heat, fighting bugs and hiking through difficult terrain only to find that your presumed outcrop is just a boring granodiorite. This was one of them!

Man in yellow shirt about to hit a rock

Smashing rocks in the heat is good exercise.

Summer trainee walking away after geological sampling

Exploration is a wonderful job to take up, always keep on looking towards the next adventure.

Would you like to read more about GTK Summer Trainee geology adventures? More articles in Finnish here.