Hévíz spa

Hungary, 200 kilometers southwest of Budapest. The Hévíz lake is the world's second-largest thermal lake, fueled by hot and cold springs deep in the bottom of the lake. Reportedly there's half a cubic meter per second of hot water coming up from a cave at the depth of 38 meters. This holds the temperature nice even during cold winters, never dropping under 24 degrees and in the summer reaching as hight as 37 degrees.

The lake has a human use history dating back to the Stone Age, though the bath culture was brought in Roman times. And then modern day bigger spa business started in the 18th century.

More information in their home page but also in Wikipedia (town), Wikipedia (spa).

More photos:

This article has also appeared here. Read all swimming stories at planetswimmer.com and sauna articles at saunablogger.cool. Or all blog articles from Blogspot. Photos and text (c) 2016 by Jari Arkko. 

Fortunate to be able tour... Suomu

 

Suomutunturi. I feel fortunate that one can travel to see these places, seventh new ski area in one week now. During the pandemic!

Suomutunturi has great slopes. Not quite to the scale of Ylläs or Levi, but very nicely skiable, steep enough, and empty of crowds. In Finland 255 meter vertical difference is nothing to laugh at, it is very good. The longest slope is 1700 meters. The front slopes are the steepest. Piste map is available here.

The hotel looks quite nice, and includes a spa.

Suomutunturi has a long history, starting from 1965 when the resort first opened. They've built the hotel over the years but in 2015 the old parts burned. The resort continues in a new hotel building.

Suomtunturi is also home to Finnish Freestyle skiing, hosting events and Finland's most successful Freestyle ski club. In the 1970s they called Freestyle skiing hot dog skiing :-) 

Coordinates: N 66.55887 E 28.02262. More information on their home page, Wikipedia. There was also an interesting article in Helsingin Sanomat about trying to lift the resort back to the jet set attention (link).

Photos:

Team:

Slopes:

Funny slope name:

Well equipped slopes... with toilets in Lapland style:

Sign about arctic circle:

This article has also been published here. Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot, TGR. Photos, videos, and text (c) 2021 by Jari Arkko and Jarmo Ruuth.

Busy Wednesday at Peuramaa

Surprisingly busy evening at the Peuramaa ski resort today. A Wednesday. Maybe there's tourists from a bit further up Finland who still have ski vacations this week? Or was it the race event that they were having. Anyway, our company ski club was having an event ... that's why we were there. Nice! Superb slopes, very nice to run on the well prepared snow surfaces, and enjoy the (cold) sunshine.

When the sun set, the temperature went down from -2 to -8. Brr.

Fortunately the ski club had organized hot chocolate and (soy) sausages. Nice.

And what a massively long magic carpet! Usually these are short lifts, but this one goes from the bottom to the top of the hill. Granted, the hill is not that big but still. And interestingly, they had two heavy-duty blowing heaters along the track, why? To remove snow? Maybe the carpet freezes or gets too mushy if they don't do this? Interesting...

Nice evening overall. 

Photos:

This article has also been published here. Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot, TGR. Photos, videos, and text (c) 2026 by Jari Arkko.

Oberstdorf: Germany's longest ski run

When we were spending the few days after the 2022 New Year's in Oberstdorf, we mostly skied in Austria near the border. But of course we also tried the local slopes! Oberstdorf's Nebelhorn was the obvious choice in town. Modern ski lifts and, lots of vertical, and very long slopes for Germany attracted us! The skiing was good, and so were the views!

While the top station of the resort is not that high (2224 m), it gets a lot of snow, and a very decent vertical (1396 m). The ski resort has also Germany's longest ski run at 7,5 km.

Oberstdorf is of course well known for them opening the alps Four Hills Tournament ski jumping competition every year. I did not know they had such good skiing, but this area is littered with ski resorts... many just in Oberstdorf and more around.

I really liked the small cabin ski lifts, with this invention in the middle to put our skis in, so easy and so practical! Why don't more ski lifts work this way:

The ski area map for the region can be found here.

More information about Oberstdorf and Nebelhorn on the Oberstdorf lift company's home page, Wikipedia, Powderhounds, and Skiresort.info. Coordinates for the valley station at Nedelhorn are N 47.40477 E 10.28574.

The ski jumps that Oberstdorf is known for:

There were some funny igloos, too:

Slopes:

Me on the ski lift:

This article has also been published here. Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot, TGR. Photos, videos, and text (c) 2021 by Jari Arkko.

Pokljuška luknja

 

Slovenia. If you are near the wonderful lake, castles, and hills of Bled but are also interested in caves and off the beaten path hiking, check out the Pokljuška soteska or the Pokljuška Gorge. Along the way there's a very nice cave, the Pokljuška luknja. Its several entrances give a striking views inside.

There's three entrances in total, two walkable (lower and upper) and one high up entrance.

I didn't scan the cave and there's no data about the cave in the Internet that I can find, including no length data. But it is probably more than 50 meters altogether. Not sure...

The coordinates are N 46.37657 E 14.03351. Some hiking is involved; the trailhead starts at N 46.37900 E 14.04152. More information can be found from the Slovenia Hiking page and the Bled information page. There's also some information at the Pokljuška soteska wikipedia page and home page.

More information about Bled's wonderful lakes in my article here (alt. link).

Entrance:

There's also an upper entrance, shown here:

Views from inside:

This article has also been published at Planetcaver.net here. Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, urban exploration stories from theurbanexplorer.net, and other underground stories from planetcaver.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot. Photos and text (c) 2023 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved. 

Day trip to Latvia, part two: caves and more caves

Skiing is done, done, done. Now some caves? 

The first cave, Kalēja Ala, is a sandstone cave. It seemed it had formed in a hill with very soft sandstone, and I wasn't sure how it was fully holding up... sand dripping from the roof. However, there was no exploring of this cave as in the winter season the bats need their rest... while there were many footprints to the cave, I stayed at the entrance, just took a photo towards the insides. It would have been a spectacular cave to visit, though, I need to come back in the summer! This cave also had a short side cave higher up on the hill.

Once I left these caves, I drove towards Riga and found the second pair of caves, including Latvia's largest cave, Gūtmaņa Ala. Massive cave, in volume but not that long. A hole on the mountainside, and with a spring at the end. Nice, and easy to visit. And open all year along :-)  This one also had a side cave that was much smaller, and this time much more cave-like.

Here's a more detailed run down of the caves, along with coordinates. I also scanned two of the caves with my iPhone's lidar capability, and created maps using my Cave Outliner software package.  

Kalēja Ala, Raiskums. Coordinates N 57.379438 E 25.262701. The cave is 46 meters long. More information here.

Photos of the cave:

Kalēja Sānu Ala. Side cave to the above. Coordinates N 57.3795475 E 25.262771. The cave is 6 meters long. This one I was able to scan with my scanning pole, the model is loadable here, can be rotated on your browser screen here, and the high-resolution map can be downloaded here.

One photo of this cave is the opening shot of this article. Other photos of the cave:

Gūtmaņa Ala, Sigulda. Coordinates N 57.176169 E 24.842373. More information here. My measurements indicate that the cave was 18 meters long, but various sources disagree on the exact length, however. 

This one I was able to scan with my scanning pole, the model is loadable here, can be rotated on your browser screen here, and the high-resolution map can be downloaded here.

Photos of the cave:

Gūtmaņa Sānu Ala. Side cave to the above. Coordinates N 57.175015 E 24.841227. I didn't measure this cave, but I wild guess is that it is around 14 meters long. Could be few meters longer or shorter.

Photos of the cave:

The previous part of this trip report was about skiing (link, alt. link). The next part is about the airport (link, alt. link).

This article has also been published at Planetcaver.net here. Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, urban exploration stories from theurbanexplorer.net, and other underground stories from planetcaver.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot. Photos and text (c) 2026 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.