Mount Vottovaara

Vottovaara rises to 417 metres in central Karelia, and its summit plateau is genuinely strange: a landscape of shattered and split granite, boulders balanced on smaller stones, dead and living pines twisted into contorted shapes by wind and by a fire that burned across it in 2006, small pools, and bare rock. Around sixteen hundred boulders sit on stone supports across the plateau, and the argument about them is unresolved - some are certainly seids, the boulder shrines of pre-Christian Sami practice found across Fennoscandia, while many are probably natural, left by ice on the stones beneath. That has not stopped the mountain acquiring a heavy modern reputation as an anomalous or mystical place, which is worth setting aside. What is real is the geology, the fire-shaped forest and the emptiness. Access is a rough track from Gimoly and then a walk, and the mountain has no facilities of any kind.

What you actually see

• The plateau - shattered granite, pools and bare rock at 417 metres.
• The boulders - around sixteen hundred on stone supports, some seids and many natural.
• The twisted pines - trees shaped by wind and by the 2006 fire.
• The modern reputation - a mystical framing that the geology does not require.

When to go

June to September. A day from Gimoly, or two with camping on the plateau. Snow closes the track in winter.

Honest expectations

The access track is very rough and needs a high vehicle or a long walk. No facilities, no water and no phone signal. The mystical claims are modern and unsupported. Mosquitoes and blackfly are severe. Weather on the plateau turns quickly.

Nearby

Gimoly is the last settlement; Petrozavodsk is far to the south-east.