Purnu

Day trip to Prune ski hill (Hiihtokeskus Purnu), a medium-sized ski hill south of Jyväskylä. Wonderful winter day and light! Trees with snow cover were amazing. It was a great ski mountain too. This was my first trip with the fixed Volvo (article, alt. link), it faired well, no breakages. On the way back I stopped at the Vierumäki sports academy swimming hall, which was also a nice experience. I thought it would have been crowded on a weekend, but by seven pm it was more or less empty. 

It was a cold day at the hill, around -13 degrees, though not much wind. I did a couple of runs and then warmed up for couple of minutes in the fireplace lean-to before continuing, very nice!

At the bottom they have a cafeteria and a rentals shop. The cafeteria has some snacks plus proper meals from a kitchen. By small ski resort standards it was remarkably spacious and nice. They also sell frozen high-quality meat, interestingly...

The vertical is 100 meters (300 feet), which is indeed good in southern-mid Finland. My local hills right in the south are in the 30-60 meter range, for instance. The longest run in Purnu is 750 meters. All the ski runs go over nice rolling hills. One of the slopes right next to the lift  is dedicated to jumps and rails, but can also be skied. Two others were basic rounding-off-from-the-skiers-left slopes, both very nice for fast skiing. The "south" ski run on skier's right was not prepared. I found that a bit odd, and in general I've been running to this a lot recently in different ski resorts. The winter is one of the best ones in recent history, but yet the ski resorts can't prepare all the slopes? I think they should...

I remember Purnu from my childhood mostly from the arts center (Taidekeskus Purnu, Wikipedia). I had not been at the ski resort, however. This visit is my 350th ski resort, in around 70 or so countries.

More information about the Purnu ski hill can be found from their home page here. One hour lift ticket costs 27€ and a day ticket 40€. And more information about the swimming hall in Vierumäki can be found here. A swimming hall visit for adults is 12,50€.

Skiing:

Vierumäki:

Author:

Purnu lift ticket:

Purnu cafeteria:

My previous ski experience was earlier this week at the Flottsbrobacken in Sweden (article, alt.link).

This article has also been published here. Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot. Or read all swimming stories at planetswimmer.com and sauna articles at saunablogger.cool. Photos, videos, and text (c) 2026 by Jari Arkko.