Goddarsbölebergen

Still in quarantine! So, I'm hiking in a forgotten forest in Kirkkonummi. And found two caves that aren't listed in any of the cave books. One roof cave, visited by climbers for the overhang. But the other one I liked a lot. It is small, but much cave-like, dark, and with a very tight entrance :-)

The coordinates for the roof cave and bouldering place are N 60.19197 E 24.52438.

The coordinates for the small dark cave are N 60.19131 E 24.52927. This cave is maybe 1.5-2m long and 0.7m wide, tall enough to stand almost straight. There's a very tight entrance (at least for me), so you have to squeeze yourself in and out.

I also found a triangle hole (coordinates N 60.18924 E 24.52545) and two cliffs with a bit of overhang/roof (coordinates N 60.18994 E 24.52469 and N 60.19057 E 24.52497) but those were not big enough to classify as caves.



Cave:

Overhang:





Triangle:



Path to the caves:



This article has also been published at TGR. See more caving stories at planetcaver.net, and all Planetskier and Planetcaver stories at Blogspot and TGR! Photos and text (c) 2020 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.

Ducktape is PERFECT for spring skiing

Downgrade your skis, and your ski season will become longer!

The Grani ski hill is starting to have spotty snow coverage, as in 20 meter patches on rock and dirt.

No matter, press on, just use your crappier skis (mine are held together by duct tape), gather enough speed, and keep skiing :-)

This article has also been published at TGR. See more Planetskier stories from TGR, Blogspot, and, of course, Planetskier.net! Photos, videos, and text (c) 2020 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.

Meltdown lockdown

It is the end of days. A meltdown, of the snow on the local ski hill.

Sniff.



This article has also been published at TGR. See more Planetskier stories from TGR, Blogspot, and, of course, Planetskier.net! Photos, videos, and text (c) 2020 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.

Finally, the final run (?)

Now THAT may have been the last run of the season.

But too many people. Yuck. Need to go back to the nightly schedule for sports :-)

This article has also been published at TGR. See more Planetskier stories from TGR, Blogspot, and, of course, Planetskier.net! Photos, videos, and text (c) 2020 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.

Lost Johanneberget cave

Jukka performed a search on cave references from the database of the Finnish National Board of Antiquities during our recent virtual meet-up. He came up with a reference to a potential cave in Espoo that none of us had heard about. Yesterday I went to look for it...

Even the location of the cave was in unknown place, Johanneberget -- that I could not easily place. After some googling there were some references in a city report, a rocky hill near the Olari intersection on Kehä II. Some of you may have seen the radio & link tower, the cave is near the tower.

The explanation in the report was quite funny:

"Mitään asumistarkoitukseen soveltuvaa luolaa luontainen rakennelma ei kuitenkaan muodosta. (...) Kohde ei siis ole muinaisjäännös."

In other words, if humans have not occupied something, it is not a historic artefact and therefore uninteresting. But it might still be interests to geologists and us cavers! :-)

What I found was sort of a mini-cave at N 60.18373 E 24.75250, and given the limited caves in Espoo, maybe this is something to be noted at least in some directory.

I'm not sure how to classify the cave's size.  There's a leaning cliff, maybe 4-5 meters long that forms a small roof cave-like thing, perhaps a meter of space under it. The cliff is part of a longer crackline in the hill. At the end of the roof cave part there's a set of boulders stuck in the crackline, and you can pass under them. On the other side you're still in the crackline but at a higher level. While the roof cave part is 4-5 meters, the under the boulders part is maybe 1-2 meters on top of that. But there are some small separate holes as well, under the main passage.

A bit further up there's a small hole between the boulders where you can see a space underneath, and some garbage, but on quick inspection I did not find a way for a person to enter that space. Perhaps the trash was simply dropped there.

There were three other small under-the-rock places on the hill, two small roof caves next to a rock, and one boulder where one could go under. All of them were small, just barely enough space for one person to be shielded from rain. The locations of these small places are:

• Small roof cave 1: N 60.18321 E 24.75191
• Small roof cave 2: N 60.18327 E 24.75207
• Small space under a boulder: N 60.18329 E 24.75214

By the way database can be accessed here, you need to fill in a search term, e.g., "luola" and the press "Hae". There's many interesting items on the list, throughout the country. Please take a look and go see the ones near you!

First glimpse of the main cave:



The roof cave part of the main cave, looking towards the boulders:



The area of the crack above the main cave, with boulders and holes underneath, but maybe not passable for a human:



Small roof cave 1:



Small roof cave 2:

Small space under a boulder:



The link tower:



Author:



This article has also been published at TGR. See more caving stories at planetcaver.net, and all Planetskier and Planetcaver stories at Blogspot and TGR! Photos and text (c) 2020 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.

One more time?

One more skiing run? Why not. Also, I have not been to Swinghill in Nuuksio yet this winter. So Tero and I decided to go see if we could ski it. While staying far enough apart to not infect each other :-)

However, it turned out that there were a couple of other people on the shrinking snow patch at the hill. Mask time.

Tero:

Snowcat:

This article has also appeared at Teton Gravity Research (TGR). See more Planetskier stories from TGR, Blogspot, and, of course, Planetskier.net! Photos, videos, and text (c) 2020 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.

Grottan arrived at mailbox

No, it is not a rat. It is a Swedish caver's magazine. Grottan is cave in Swedish.

This issue had a number of interesting articles, e.g., Stefan Barth's article about connecting previously separate caves in the Hemavan region. And Rabbe Sjöberg had two articles pointing people to cave leads that he knows about but which had not been studied. Perhaps an opportunity for exploring never-before-visited parts of the world?

But the most interesting article for me was Albin Enetjärn's description of his research to use the Swedish national land surveying data bases to spot potential sinkholes. Recent laser-based measurements provide an accurate ground shape measurements, which can then be used by algorithms to find specific features. Such as sinkholes in this case. Albin's research focused on a sample area in Västerbotten. Nice work!

The Grottan is published by the Swedish Caving Association.

See more caving stories at planetcaver.net, and all Planetskier and Planetcaver stories at Blogspot and TGR! Photos and text (c) 2020 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.

Lumonite BX caving light repair

My best caving light broke down last week on a nightly skiing excursion. I measured it and determined that the likely culprit was broken battery. Today the mail delivered a spare battery, and I installed and voilá, the light works again! Happy about not having to look for a new light.

In the process the battery type changed a bit, because the original one was not available. The BX light series in general is out of production and stock; the new models by Lumonite are more powerful and more lightweight but they also don't look as rugged as the BX 1500 that I have. The BX is mostly metallic cooling frame, and it is the one that gets hits first to rock above your head. I'd hate to hit a plastic led cover to the same rocks.

Hence I'd love to keep my BX running for as long as possible.

There's an upside and downside with the new battery. The new battery is slightly larger and heavier 374g instead 274g. That being said, I have run out of light on a caving trip (link) so going from 7000 mAh to 10500 mAh is appreciated. And I was able to mount the batter far and low in the back of the helmet, it should not usually come in the way.

I acquired by new batteries from Valostore.

See more caving stories at planetcaver.net, and all Planetskier and Planetcaver stories at Blogspot and TGR! Photos and text (c) 2020 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.

Virtual caving club meeting. In a cave.

Another caver's club virtual meeting! Nice! Since the others played around with nice picture backgrounds, I decided to have a background of my own: in a cave in Korkberget, Kirkkonummi.

I hiked in through the other -- west/north -- side of the Korkberget peninsula, because I wanted to see if I could find any new caves on that side. I was kind of expecting to find something semi-substantial, given the boulders and massive caves on the other side, and the map said there would be cliffs. That's usually a good sign.

However, I only found two small roof caves, just a few meters across. Nevertheless, I had to take note of them :-) the locations are N 60.16249 E 24.45227 and N 60.16246 E 24.45227. There was also a trench from the Russian occupation times somewhere along the way.

I then proceeded to have the meeting in a carefully chosen under-the-boulders hole that I had not been to previously and that is not in the main cave that might have attracted some hikers during the day. Isolation!

The meeting went nicely, my connection under the boulder was still 4G.

I left Korkberget at some point to get back home and make dinner for the kids. Palak Paneer, with some wine. The caver's meeting continued for six hours :-)

Dinner:



Crazy set of lights:



Small roof cave 1:



Small roof cave 2:

Trench:



See more caving stories at planetcaver.net, and all Planetskier and Planetcaver stories at Blogspot and TGR! Photos and text (c) 2020 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.

Five-day winter

The official statistics are in: in southern Finland, the thermal winter lasted only five days. But, I should note that first of May and the Midsummer are still ahead of us.

(And see the recent late winter arrival for proof.)

See more Planetskier stories from TGR, Blogspot, and, of course, Planetskier.net! Photos, videos, and text (c) 2020 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.

I deny my involvement

I did *not* have anything to do with this. Really.

(If you can't read Finnish, the newspapers were reporting on yesterday's snowfall in the Helsinki area, and that some skier had been seen in the city center.)

See more Planetskier stories from TGR, Blogspot, and, of course, Planetskier.net! Photos, videos, and text (c) 2020 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.

It's a snow day! We can stay home! ... Oh... wait

It's a snow day! We can stay home! ... Oh... wait

This article has also been published at TGR. See more Planetskier stories from TGR, Blogspot, and, of course, Planetskier.net! Photos, videos, and text (c) 2020 by Jari Arkko, Jarmo Ruuth, and Alexander Krotov. All rights reserved.

Snowing in Vihti

It still wasn't the last run of the season! Vihti rules!

Me, Jarmo, and Sasha travelled to Vihti to go see the ski slope and whether it would still have snow. The only webcam in Vihti didn't give us a picture of the slopes, so we were guessing.

But the guesses were right, there is still plenty of snow in Vihti, in fact four different slopes have snow. Although, unfortunately, the staff caught us afterwards and instructed us to go away... ok. Maybe so. Obviously, we weren't disturbing anything in the slopes, and being safe.. and we were social-distancing all the time, typically at least 50 meters apart, occasionally maybe at least 10 meters. And the few golfers that were on the site that day were all in the very other end of the parking lot, so no danger there either.

The skiing and views were wonderful though! The snow was just the right firmness, not too hard, not too soft. The entire slope, the main run, was covered by snow. And the views from the top in the evening sunshine were wonderful, interrupted occasionally by the snowing (!) that was going on during the day.

I also had the opportunity to do some urban exploration on this trip.

This article has also been published at TGR. See more Planetskier stories from TGR, Blogspot, and, of course, Planetskier.net! Photos, videos, and text (c) 2020 by Jari Arkko, Jarmo Ruuth, and Alexander Krotov. All rights reserved.