The Usmi shelter cave in Hyvinkää

I was inspired to go here by Antti Huttunen's article in Retkipaikka. There's a forgotten, hard-to-access rocky hill and cliff area in Hyvinkää: Usminkalliot. With a cave!

Usminkalliot seems like a forgotten place, not very widely known. I did not know about it, for instance, despite visiting Hyvinkää frequently. It natural protection areas also a bit hard to reach, no easy parking nearby that I could find, and while there are some roads, the road sides have houses block access to the forests and hills beyond in some places. But you will find a way :-)

Once you get to Usminkalliot, it is a wonder of nature! It is a high hill, nice views from the top. And at the bottom there's a deep valley and a stream/rapids running at the valley bottom. The caves are reachable by walking on the east bank of the stream (there is a place for crossing though). At first I went to the top of the cliff, and getting down seemed difficult, but in the end as I continued north there was a path down towards the streams. The map and coordinates are not super helpful for finding the cave, as ar some point I was just ten meters from the cave horizontally, but thirty meters too high :-)

At the bottom of the valley one finds also some large chunks of ice, shielded by the deep shadowy walls:

Usminkallion lippaluola (the main shelter cave) is roughly 25 meters wide and up to 5 meters deep towards the cliff. The coordinates are N 60.65167928 E 24.78369635. I scanned the cave using my iPhone, and then used my "Cave Outliner" software to draw a map of it. See below for a picture of the map and a 3D model:

But a full PDF version of the map is here, and an on-screen rotatable version of the 3D model is here.

Pictures of the cave:

Here are pictures of the stream:

Here's a view from the top of the Usminkallio hill:

Antti reported that there's a possible old quarry. Maybe. Here's what I saw:

There was also a couple of tiny mini-cavelets:

Usminkallion lippakolo (tiny shelter, 1x1m): N 60.65200429 E 24.78317339. See below:

Usminkallion lipparako (shelter crack, 5x1m): N 60.65143561 E 24.78403741. See below:

Read more urban exploration stories from theurbanexplorer.net, and other underground stories from planetcaver.net. Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot or TGR. Photos and text (c) 2024 by Jari Arkko, map picture is a snapshot from Google Maps. All rights reserved.