Tero and I were on a trip... while caving was not the main purpose of the trip, as usual I also wanted visit a cave. A promising-looking hole at the Pyhä ski area turned out to not be a human-sized hole. But while returning to the airport in Rovaniemi, we drove south of the city to look at Tapulikallion onkalot (Tapulicliff holes). We founded a very weird, large boulder.
Usually, Finnish boulders are moved around by the ice age, and are made of hard rock and sharp edges. But the Tapulikallio boulder is ... weathered? Dissolved? Lost the weak parts of the stone? The entire boulder is covered by 5-10 cm small holes and crevices.
At first we thought there's no proper cave here at all, even if the Finnish book of caves lists a "0.5 meter cave" at this location. But there is actually a hole under the rock, big enough for one person to be fully inside. I don't think this hole is necessarily part of the same weathering process as there was on the outside of the boulder. The rock surfaces are smoother, so maybe the hole is simply space left under the boulder.
The opening of the hole was maybe one meter across, and 40-50 cm high, and perhaps 70 cm deep. But on the right side of the hole the cave continued a little bit, maybe 1.5 meters so that one could indeed go entirely in.
The boulder is by the road, at coordinates N 66.40315 E 25.42945, near the shores of Kemijoki river. The name of the road going by is "Kemijärven itäpuolentie".
There's also a simple (not measured) map here.
Rock surface:
The boulder:
Inside:
A troll?
More rock forms:
This article has also appeared at TGR. See more caving stories at Planetcaver.net, and all Planetskier and Planetcaver stories at Blogspot and TGR! See also my cave map that runs the Psgeo software that has now been open sourced! This article and photos are (c) 2020 by Tero Kivinen and Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.
This article was originally published in the Planetskier Blogspot article series.
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