Finland - Goblin's Gorge Gravel Loop
"From the official website of the route: https://www.bikeland.fi/en/lakelandbycycle-hitonhaudan The Goblin’s Gorge Gravel Loop is a spectacular 349km and 5-to-7-day route on gravel roads in the heart of Central Finland. It combines the population centers of Jyväskylä, Joutsa, Lievestuore, Suolahti, and Uurainen as well as the services and natural sites mainly along the trafficless gravel back roads. The Leivonmäki National Park and the Hitonhauta (Goblin’s Gorge), some of the highlights on the way, are some clear visible remnants of the previous ice age, having carved its marks deep into the base rock and forming endless moraine ridges across the region. Thanks to the work of the ice mass, the area is not surprisingly also full of lakes, providing more than 20 beaches along the route for a skinny-dipping or evening dust wash-off by the camp. The route starts and ends in the City of Jyväskylä, so getting on the route could not be easier by public transportation from different parts of Finland."
Ride difficulty rating
The Weichselian glaciation came to an end about 10,500 years ago when the last of the continental glacier melted in Northern Finland. The ice age started 116,000 years ago and lasted for more than a hundred millennia. The ice mass deformed the Finnish soil and eroded bedrock as it retreated, grew, and moved leaving behind a moraine layer of an average thickness of 7m. The moraine layer evolved eventually into terminal moraine ridges and eskers. However, the ice mass also created moraine-free areas of base rock, ravine valleys, and gorges. As a result today Central Finland has its unique geology of rolling forest-covered hills, occasional base rock formations with steep-sided cliffs surrounded by thousands of lakes and ponds.
