The Baltic region is well known for being flat and it sits in the heart of the Great European Plain, which is the largest area in Europe without mountains. This probably accounts for why Estonia sees so little climbing activity, but you would be very wrong to assume there is no climbing in the country. On the contrary, there are hundreds of boulders in Estonia and it isn’t low-ball pebble wrestling either, many of them are enormous.

The large number of erratic boulders in Estonia were used to help develop early theories about continental glaciation. Now we know that both igneous and metamorphic boulders were carried to Estonia from Finland on a glacier, around 20,000 years ago. The boulders were deposited in their final resting place roughly 13,000 years ago when the glacier melted. Geologists have compared the composition of the boulders to those in southern Finland and have been able to map out which areas specifically they travelled from.

We started our journey in Estonia much the same way the boulders did…by taking the ferry from Finland. After reading about the boulders on ClimbEstonia, we knew we wanted to spend some time climbing here and enjoy seeing some beautiful parts of Estonia that are off the radar of almost everyone.

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