Skiing the Planet

Sunday, September 8, 2019

Military tunnels deep inside Mali Hum

The taxi drivers are a great information source. This time I asked about a hole in a cliff face, and got all the information I needed to visit it later. And it should be a safe place to go to...

... but it is still intriguing. I'm always intrigued if I see a hole in rock. This particular hole turned out to be military-dug tunnels, defence positions built after the WW2. But even after visiting the tunnels, many questions remain. What's the purpose of the huge ventilation ducts? To draw away the gun smoke? Why are there two tunnels leading to the same complex, but the other one blocked, except for a hole too small for a person to go through?

And how can one access the hole high up on the cliff face -- the one that I had initially noticed? Perhaps I should have climbed to the door up on the walls of the bunker, but I didn't feel like doing sketchy climbs on a solo trip inside a mountain.

Entering these tunnels was an exercise in withstanding something that I really hate, flies.. lots of flies resting from sunshine inside. When someone walks in, they all raise up and fly around you. More flies than I've ever seen.

Coordinates: N 43.04755 E 16.10746.

The high up tunnel:

The left (less finished) tunnel:

The climb to the 2nd level and possibly to the upper tunnel:

Hole between the two tunnels:

The flies:

Saw this elsewhere, could not decide whether this is a great idea a bad bad mistake. Military and alcohol don't usually mix:

Natural caves crossed by the tunnels:

Ventilation ducts in the gun (?) room:

The road to the caves:

This article has also been published at TGR. See all the caving and urban exploration stories at planetcaver.net and theurbanexplorer.net, or take a look all the stories at Blogspot and TGR! Photos and text (c) 2019 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.

Tito's cave

Tito was hiding out on the Vis island during WW2, reportedly on small mountaintop caves. Steps lead to the caves today from the Mount Hum road, and they can be easily visited.

There's two caves, the larger being the housing and the smaller being the resistance headquarters. As caves these are small, and much of the enclosure is due to constructed rock walls. Still, an interesting historical visit.

The coordinates of the main cave are 43°02'13.5"N 16°07'15.1"E.

The cave part:

The main cave from outside:

Writings:

Tito's throne seat, I guess:

The main cave from outside, with the rock wall:

Good start

The Volvo... keeps having issue starting. Here's what a typical good start sounds like:

Photos and videos (c) 2019 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.

Tuesday, September 3, 2019

Iljushin playground

Returning back from Budapest, Janne and I found a small but remarkable aviation museum next to the Ferenc Liszt airport. A different museum, at least from our point because it featured more of the eastern aircraft than the western ones we've seen more often. Iljushin, Tupolev, Yak, etc.

Much recommended!

Old headrests... from the smoking section!

Tupolev:

Warnings:

Also DC-3:

Saturday, August 31, 2019

Massive crack cave at Korkberget

Korkberget is probably Finland's largest cave, with 300+ meters of tight tunnels underneath massive boulders. But, there's also a cliff... and if you climb half-way up the cliff, you will find an amazing crack that leads underground.

The crack is a known but difficult geocaching location. Getting to the end of the crack and the cache means a chimney climb maybe eight meters high, on top of a gradually tightening crack. If you fall... it is not clear that you can get out.

I've been here once, first time with the Finnish Caving Association's (Luolaseura) excursion. On that excursion Paul, an experienced caver and climber helped me, the scared beginner to get down to the bottom of the crack.

This time we visited Korkberget on my Swedish friend Per's visit to Finland. In the small group with Per, Tor, Ralf, Jarmo, and me we had more time to explore this crack, and it just seems even more amazing, but still scary. I didn't want to explore to the lowest part, but some of the others did visit it.

Quite an experience. To my knowledge this is the biggest and possibly the only crack caving location in Finland. Much recommended, but only for experienced climbers and cavers!

See below for more photos, most of which are from Jarmo's camera by the way (he takes great photographs!)

Climbing in the crack:

Climbing up to the crack:

Exit from the middle of the cliff back down:

See all the caving stories at planetcaver.net, or take a look all the stories at Blogspot and TGR! This article has also appeared at TGR. Tämä artikkeli löytyy myös suomeksi Relaasta. Photos and text (c) 2019 by Jarmo Ruuth and Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.

Siuntio bunker tips from Dutch tourists

Having researched the locations of the Russian bunkers in Porkkala for years, I was surprised to learn the location of another bunker from Dutch tourists on their first day of visiting Finland. They pointed us to a small bunker few hundred meters from the large one we had visited earlier, based on their geocaching explorations.

And of course, Jarmo -- who is always well organized and has a database of locations -- knew about this as well, but he had not visited the other bunker either.

The bunker turned out to be of the small, most common format used by the Russians during the occupation. Like many others, the bunker was destroyed, perhaps partially blown up. But unlike most other bunkers, it was filled almost to the brim with rocks; one had to crawl to move inside.

The coordinates for this bunker are N 60.13383 E 24.195347. And once again, Jarmo has taken many of the photos!

Per going in:

The team, Ralf, Per, Jarmo and myself:

See all the caving and urban exploration stories at planetcaver.net and theurbanexplorer.net, or take a look all the stories at Blogspot and TGR! Photos and text (c) 2019 by Jarmo Ruuth and Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.

Afternoon swim at the abandoned underground submarine base

It is always nice to dip in to sea for a swim. Even if you're visiting an abandoned underground submarine base.

An interesting place, of course. A number of side tunnels, connecting an underground hangar carved into the mountain that would protect any maintenance that you needed to do on the subs. Darkness. But very clear water, even if one could see some submarine and docking junk at the bottom. Clear waters.. probably 10 meters or so deep, clear visibility to the bottom.

As I walked deeper into the tunnel, a loud kaboom sounded behind me. A sharp sound; turned out that someone jumped into the water from the entrance tunnel, a 16-meter drop. Not for me!

Of course, I also went for a swim, but wanted to do that in the dark end of the tunnel. The only problem was that I was alone, and that there weren't really proper places to go down, you could only jump down from a floating platform. I figured I'd just push myself up when coming back, but it turned out to be harder than expected. After some scratches on my skin, I did manage to get back again. I could also have swam back out of the tunnel, and catch the easier beach rocks outside the tunnel. But it was a scary moment, still.

Graffiti in the tunnels:

Dark waters where I swam:

Exit:

Views:

More graffiti:

Views to the bottom:

See all the caving and urban exploration stories at planetcaver.net and theurbanexplorer.net, or take a look all the stories at Blogspot and TGR! And don't forget the swimming stories at planetswimmer.com! This article has also been published at TGR. Photos and text (c) 2019 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.

More cave

A sign for a cave? Intrigued. It turns out that it leads to the "Cave Bar More", one of the bar's listed in Business Insider's 50 incredible bars you should drink at in your lifetime list.

The Cave Bar More is a bar underneath the More hotel in Dubrovnik, Croatia. The cave was found during the construction of the hotel, and sports among other things a high vertical cave shaft, with a glass floor in the middle to view the water at the bottom of the cave.