Night skiing. Really night, as in no lights.

Lux Nuuksio is an event in the wintery Nuuksio, in a popular national park north of the capital region of Finland. The scenery is lit with candles, fires, lanterns, and ... skier's headlamps. And in my case, skier's Christmas lights and the big, shining Mickey Mouse ears.

Both Jarmo and I had noted this event, and went there. The skier's part took place in Swinghill, a small ski hill popular among the die hard skiers and uphill skinners. 

It was wonderful, people (not me) skiing moguls with just their headlight, the scenery around the mountain was still lit a bit by street lights and the receding sunset, everything looked much prettier in the night.

My outfit? It was ok in the end, though it was the second iteration, and actually a failure of that second iteration. I didn't start out by trying to put on Mickey Mouse ears :-) I started out by trying to build a Chinese-style Ikea lamp paper shade (4.90€) around my helmet. But, as you might guess I did not find a way to insert my helmet into this tensioned wire and paper ball. Or my head for that matter. 

Plan B was to put up two Lumonite headlamps in my helmet, but do it in a way that they would end up being inside blue rubber balloons. I didn't have much trust that this would succeed, but to my surprise it was possible to pull the balloon opening over half of the lamp, still blow it up, still operate the lamp buttons that were now inside the balloon, and not have the hot LEDs burn through the rubber.

However, in the process the bright lights - even if set at the lowest setting - overpowered the blue color, so I ended up with two bright lamps dangling above my helmet. 

It looked pretty stupid, but did fit my character so why not? 

I jumped into my car and grabbed a batter powered Christmas lights to wrap around myself for added measure. And added stupidity.

And it was actually fun! The mouse ears gave just enough light to barely see a bit of the slope, even with the helmet visor on. 

The only downside was that despite advice, I went to do this while slightly feeling my throat. Been feeling that all week... and the outing did not improve the condition :-(

Helmet construction:

Views:

The professional dress code:

Cafeteria:

Me:

Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot, TGR. Photos, videos, and text (c) 2024 by Jari Arkko and Jarmo Ruuth. Actually, photos mostly by Jarmo (thanks!)