Skiing the Planet: June 2020

Tuesday, June 30, 2020

Midsummer swim

I was a bit busy among picking up groceries, work in the yard, and fetching some medicines for the kids that I almost had no time to celebrate midsummer on the eve. But, I did get a chance to put in a very nice swim!

Jupperinranta, on the shores of Pitkäjärvi in Espoo's Kuninkainen was a nice place to visit. A few other people were there as well, but not too many.

I also had a nice bath whisk from own garden in my own sauna:

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) 2020 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.

Parking practice

Parking practice between tightly parked cardboard boxes. Front, back, parallel. Oh and the Volvo has been running nicely for ALMOST THREE DAYS by now.

Wow, what a nice midsummer present!

Whoa, the repair guys at Latokaske's Tiikeritarha really pulled a miracle this time. The cost was only 190€, despite estimate of 700€ and a mid-way statement that "they've run into issues". I was expecting at least a 1000€....

What a nice midsummer surprise!

Indeed perhaps still 190€ more than the car is worth but not bad either. The reason for the low price was that the parts they had gotten turned out to be for the wrong year model, so they abandoned the original plan of removing the gearbox and changing all parts in the clutch. Instead, they just fixed the broken part in place. A nice midsummer present, in any case!

Volvo repair done... afraid of the cost

I'm told that the Volvo works. Now dreading to go inside to learn about the bill. Any guesses?

Sunday, June 14, 2020

Returning to the airport after Covid-19

This isn't a busy place. In fact, on my first visit I didn't see a single person on my way in through one terminal and half-way on the walkway to the other one where I needed to pick up a rental car.

Spooky.

Also, the signs say wearing a mask is mandatory at the airport. On my second visit I saw maybe ten other people, and no one else except me was wearing a mask.

Frozen Brain Lake

As I was driving back from Ylläs, I came across an odd sign about Pakasaivo, which translates roughly to "Frozen Brain". What was it? I had to stop and look it up. Soon I was driving the tiny 11-kilometer road to go see it.

Pakasaivo is a small, freaky lake with some special geographical and biological characteristics. To begin with, it is a lake that is entirely surrounded by 60-meter cliffs. Going down to the lake beach is possible, but tricky. There are, however, well-constructed observation platforms, hiking paths, and the lake is just 200 meters from the official parking lot.

But the real oddities start deeper down. The lake has no incoming or outgoing river flows, except for a small but very nice waterfall from a stream near the observation deck. The theory is that there are underground water flows to and from the lake.

The real odd thing, however, is 12 meters under the lake surface. The regular lake water turns into to hydrogen sulphide-rich water at that level, and there's no oxygen in the water. Bacteria and other life doesn't life there, so anything that has sunk to the lake stays unchanged for a very long time. Such as trees fallen to the lake, or boats sunk there.

There has been only limited exploration of this interesting lake. What wonders lie beneath the water, or on the most difficult-to-reach parts of cliffs? Are there are underwater rivers?

There's also a cave in in the cliffs, reported by the book caves in Finland ("Suomen Luolat") and by the website dedicated to Pakasaivo. I was unable to find it though, despite fairly good instructions on the website. The problem is that the location is in the middle of the cliff, and it is not easily visible. I went back and forth on the designated spot, but perhaps at wrong levels in the cliff.

But I did go further down and started climbing a sketchy canyon going up. The area seemed promising for small caves, and indeed there was one small hole between the rocks at coordinates N 67.61696 E 23.79385, maybe 10-15 meters above the lake. But eventually I gave up going all the way up, as it was getting even sketchier.

You can find more information about Pakasaivo from Wikipedia and a dedicated web site.

Saturday, June 13, 2020

Rethinking this car thing

After the clutch broke, I felt the situation is critical.

In a brief moment of insanity, I browsed used Volvos on sale... maybe a 19-year old v70 for 1000€?

But, today I rediscovered this:

Why do I need a car, actually?

Oops, fluids have left the clutch

Oops, fluids have left the clutch.

Darn.

Training the next generation Volvo drivers

Volvo is helping the next generation to drive. Or at least get used to gears, clutch and the works before entering the real driving school. First parking by the soon 18yo: car could be more center perhaps but no walls were hit. Success :-)

The book of boulders (Suomen Lohkareet)

My earlier post was about data sources for finding new caves. I've now been reading the Suomen Lohkareet (the book of boulders in Finland) book, and it is great.

The book recognises that it cannot cover all the million large boulders in Finland, but picks the most interesting ones. The boulders are described per category of interest, e.g., boulders with caves under them, boulder fields, those with historical events tied to them, fishing- or water-related boulders, and so on.

I did find many interesting places to visit from the book, and also some new data sources, such as GTK's Hakku website. GTK is Geologian Tutkimus Keskus or the national. geology research center. The book's URL seems outdated though, but the service can be reached at hakku.gtk.fi. For instance, you can:

Find registered boulders, from GTK's or mining companies past research. Click on "Lohkarehavainnot" at the location data page.
Find all mines in Finland by clicking on "Kaivokset", again at the location data page.
Recent landslides and other movements, click on "Nuoret siirrokset ja maanvyöryt".
Ground rock type areas in the Helsinki region, click on "Kallioperän lohkot".
The data can either be browsed on the website or downloaded for free.

Onkalonperä?

Onkalonperä means "the backside of a hole". Fortunately, not "hole in the backside"! I saw this as I was driving towards Ylläs. I don't know anything about it, but are there are any holes or caves in that village? Maybe worth investigating...

Wednesday, June 10, 2020

A different Ylläs 24

I decided to do my own Ylläs 24 event, to replace the one cancelled in April. It is already June, not a lot of snow remains. But some, and what a wonderful sunshine for the entire 24 hours - midnight sun was shining, as Ylläs is far above the arctic circle.

I can't explain how lucky I feel to be able to do this. Having something like this near enough to be able to drive here, in a place that has round the clock sunshine, the good weather, having free time to do this. And snow this late in the year!!! Although a week or two earlier would have been even more spectacular in terms of more skiing :-)

The Ylläs 24 is a round-the-clock skiing event, organised as a happy, amateur event put at the same putting in some good amount of vertical for the 24 hours. Usually, the skiers go up by the Gondola.

I hiked up from the parking lot to the top, not entirely aware of how much snow there would be or would not be behind the clouds that didn't depart until I was on my way. Turns out the main slopes, such as the World Cup run, were mostly out of snow. But there were some good 200-300 meter runs at the top towards the north.

I stayed up in a tent, in comfortable temperature but some winds that were flapping the tent through the night.

And I still can't get over the colors of that midnight sun.

Slopes:

Views:

Tent:

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

Haavikkolehto cave, now with a map!

Haavikkolehto - a protected site with many boulders left by the ice age - is also very interesting from caving perspective. Likely not everything here has been found. But the most spectacular cave is known from this Retkipaikka article.

I visited Haavikkolehto to draw a map of the cave. But I also realized there are more caves, e.g., right next to the main cave there are other boulders, and inside their cracks there are other relative long (maybe 10-20m) of passages in a single cave, though perhaps not as spectacular large opening as in the main cave. The above picture is from that second cave.

The main cave is at N 62.54240 E 26.91218, and per the book "Suomen Luolat", the official name of the cave is Karhukiven luola. The side cave is at N 62.54235 E 26.91267. I found the main cave from the always excellent Retkipaikka in this article, by Antti Huttunen. And here, However, there are a number of other cavers in the Haavikkolehto area as well, reported here, here, and here.

Cave map of the main cave, drawn by me, is here:

There's also a more accurate PDF link.

More pictures:

Looking for caves on Nilsiä's Mustikkamäki

I'm looking for caves... not for bears. But heard some growling and saw some big piles of sh*t, so decided to do a roundabout tour to return to the car.

Not sure if I misheard, however. Could just have been birds flapping their wings.

But why was I here? First off, I needed a night place to stay during my contactless, quarantine ski trip to Tahko. So I found this nice beach site at the end of a forestry road, couple of kms from the nearest houses, and near the Pisa national park. Mustikkamäki is an about 200-meter high rocky hill between my camping spot and the national park, and my goal was to go through the cliffs and boulder areas of the hill, in search of possible new caves.

I did not find anything significant, but I did find one medium-sized crawable roof cavelet, one hole where one person can get inside, and one high but quite open roof cavelet. And in addition, there was a couple of other small spaces under cliff lids, i.e., tiny roof cavelets.

The caves and their coordinates:

The crawable roof cavelet ("Bear's cavelet"): N 63.21082 E 28.35865 (map)
The small hole in the rock cavelet: N 63.21131 E 28.35668 (map)
Large but high roof cave: N 63.20815 E 28.35552 (map)
The small corner space under a roof: N 63.21142 E 28.35659
The small space under a roof 1: N 63.21213 E 28.35705
The small space under a roof 2: N 63.20833 E 28.35537

Crawable roof cavelet (also pictured above):

Hole for one person:

High but open roof cavelet:

Small space under a roof 1:

Small space under a roof 2:

Small space under a roof 3:

Skiing Tahko on May 30th

What a wonderful experience, hiking up the 200 meters high ski hill in deserted Tahko, in sunshine. And taking a sunset ski run back to the lake, almost all of it on still preserved snow.

And then, a swim in the lake. And camping in my car (didn't bother setting up the tent). Self-sufficiency with all the supplies, except for a quick refuel at an automated station.

Some might say lonely but I think it was calm solitude and connection to very beautiful nature.

The trip to Tahko was a part of a longer roadtrip, see the article about the other ski resorts. There's also articles about cave visits in Nilsiä and Suonenjoki.