Hotel beach

Komiža is the exclusive, still largely authentic fishing village on the Vis island on Croatia's Adriatic Sea coast. There's multiple beaches, and my favorite is the Lucica Beach. But the one near Hotel Bisevo, Gusarica Beach is also nice! It is larger, and more popular. I usually call it the hotel beach.

You can find the beach location from Google via this link.

There's a bar, a church, couple of diving centers, canoe rentals, a port ... and the hotel. All you need, that is. The beach is easy and well protected. As with elsewhere in Vis, the beach is pebbles rather than sand. I prefer to use some kind of shows to not make my feet hurt.

This is the little street, Ribarska Ulica. It is the main shopping street in Komiža:

This is the harbor in front of the hotel beach, photographed in the night:

More pictures from the beautiful alleys of Komiža:

For more information about the Gusarica beach, read this. And for Lucica, read this or this.

For more sauna and swimming stories, check out planetswimmer.com and saunablogger.cool websites! And of course the Planetcaver, and Planetskier blogs for other stories in Blogspot and TGR! The photos and text (c) 2024 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved. I never take recognisable photos of other saunagoers or swimmers. and try to visit at times where there is simply no one else around or the facility has been booked only for me.

Abandoned metro station with high voltage barriers

Kymlinge, the ghost station on the Stockholm underground. A station for the planned but never completed suburb near Kista's technology-oriented neighborhood. A station where only the dead are said to exit, and where only the long lost ghost train, the "Silverpilen" travel. A station with underground platforms and additional space underneath.

I had heard about this, but had forgotten all about it until my friend Johan happened to mention it; he had gone running in the area. I had one evening left in the area, a rainy evening, but decided I wanted to check this out. 

The question, as always, was whether one could enter this place. Would be nice to collect another underground location that I have visited. However... the station is unused, but it is not on an unused track. The subway trains to and from the nearby Kista station run through the station every few minutes.

I kept searching for a possible emergence or secondary exit. But I did not find anything on top of the station. At the other end of the station the ground drops away and the trains run on a bridge. Locked metal doors lead under the station, but ... indeed locked. And these doors are anyway far away from the station's passenger platforms, so maybe they wouldn't have led anywhere anyway.

The tracks are blocked by heavy metal fences and barbwire. There was of course a door for the maintenance personnel, with a lock:

It did turn out, however, that the door was unlocked.

This would have offered a way in. However, across the subway tracks with exposed train power line on the side. In a moment of uncharacteristic sanity, I decide to not cross the tracks. I'd rather stay a bit further away from exposed electricity lines. And also I didn't like to have to run to the station platform's darkness before the next trains to arrive, or have the drivers alert if they'd see me in the platform. Lame, I know :-)

So I did not get to visit the station. Maybe some day, perhaps they will have a tour or something...

More information about the Kymlinge station can be found in Wikipedia, Atlas Obscura, Kynerd, Story tours, Stockholm's Hjärtä (recommended!) and Robert Eklund. 

The station's platforms look like this:

Here's the bridge-side metal doors:

I didn't know what these signs were in the forest... MTB routes? Didn't seem so extreme...

Kista is an interesting combination of extremes, by the way. On one hand there's extreme high tech being developed there, with 30+ story skyscrapers dotting the landscape. Then again, there's old farm houses... and forests.

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. All rights reserved. 

Sand skiing in Jiehtájohka

On the way back home from the Käsivarsi wilderness area heli-hiking trip, we saw a large sand dune near the Jiehtájohka river as we were driving by. We were about to stop at a restaurant few kilometers away, and fortunately Jarmo and Duncan were game for returning after lunch to check out the dune. And indeed, there was sand, it was steep enough to be skied, and I was able to make a couple of turns on my red mini-skis! Enough to call the month's turns done.

And thanks guys for taking the photos and videos while I skied :-)

But this sudden appearance of a skiable sand dune came after some earlier disappointments. I had my mini skis on the hiking trip. Carried them for tens of kilometers... *Except* of course on the side trip that we unexpectedly found the snow on the north side of a far-away ridge. 

Well, maybe that's just as well. As you can see above, there's a narrow snow patch on a steep ridge. The mini-skis are great for taking them into different places, but they are not the safest skis to make precision turns on treacherous places with sharp boulders to fall onto. 

We also saw snow on the far away mountains while we hiked, and even some snow from the windows of the helicopter, but didn't have time or money to make extra stops.

Finally, we also saw snow in the Olos ski resort (near where we stayed in Särkijärvi). Unfortunately, it was snow stored for the next winter season, covered by thick blankets:

Anyway, despite these disappointments I managed to make my turns in August :-) All hail the sand skiing!

Video:

Jiehtájohka is the Saami name; the Finnish version Hietajoki (sandy river). The dune is in these coordinates: N 68.468224 E 22.423468. There's easy access from the road, and space to park. I'm sure there's plenty of more of the sand in this area, but the area right towards the road seemed to be the one with most open sand.

The Käsivarsi trip was for discovering caves. It is discussed separately here, here, and here. And the previous year's trip's findings were discussed here; I also skied back then, but in the wilderness, see this article.

A picture of Duncan's camera after he had taken photos:

More pictures of the snow we found near a ridge behind Doskalharj:

More pictures from Jiehtájohka:

Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot or TGR. Photos and text (c) 2024 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.  The audio has been generated by Google's NotebookLM in podcast mode.

The search for Toskaljärvi area caves: peek into every hole

TBD ...

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. All rights reserved. 

Toskaljärvi swims

Hiking 10-15 km per day... being bitten by mosquitos day and night... it was clear that a swim would be not only refreshing but required. The only downside was that it was pretty cold, the river (partially flowing from an underground river, possibly a cave) was only 9 degrees. The lake was like a hot tub, though, at 14 degrees :-)

Such as wonderful swims, such an incredibly beautiful place to swim at.

I took at least a bath (standing in the river and splashing water on my) or a swim every day, in fact. Since I was short on carrying too many supplies for this 6-day trip, my backpack weighing only 17 kilos with all the equipment, it also offered me a chance to wash my clothes every day, so that day after they might be dry and fresh to be worn again.

We were at Toskaljärvi, far out beyond civilization, it would be a 40km hike here from the nearest road. Although we did take a helicopter ride for our first leg, then hiked 10km to Toskaljärvi.

Here are the coordinates for Toskaljärvi itself: N 69.196475 E 21.442531.

And the river swimming place is at: N 69.199993 E 21.441703. This river unfortunately has no name.

River swimming place. It is shallow though, so you can lie down, or splash yourself...

On the last nights we also enjoyed some shots of Whiskey (Latitude 55) that Duncan had brought. Very nice!

The author, in the mosquito land after the fresh swim:

Last year we visited a nearby lake, Njiellalanjávri. See the swimming article for that.

For more sauna and swimming stories, check out planetswimmer.com and saunablogger.cool websites! And of course the Planetcaver, and Planetskier blogs for other stories in Blogspot and TGR! The photos and text (c) 2024 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.