It really was the last trip...

It really was the last trip... for a while.

On my recent trip to Israel, I felt a bit like it was the last trip, with Coronavirus concerns rising, upcoming meetings being cancelled, and so on. And it has gotten way worse since then.

Everyone is hunkering down to weather out the disease. Borders being closed, entire countries in lockdown. Sigh. Hopefully we come out of this soon. In the meantime, be safe:

Photos and text (c) 2020 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved. Read more skiing stories from planetskier.net, Blogspot, and TGR.

Abandoned watchtower on Golan Heights

One particularly interesting thing about Mount Hermon were the military installations. Many of them. in active use, but also many that had been abandoned or that lay in ruins.

I climbed up, of course :-) even with the rust...

The metallic watchtower was near the bottom of the Sion chairlift (the one furthest to the left on the official map). The coordinates of the tower are N 33.3217 E 35.7737.

Here's the tower:

We also spotted the occasional soldier:

See more urban exploration stories at theurbanexplorer.net. Photos and text (c) 2020 by Jari Arkko and Tero Kivinen. All rights reserved.

Unexpected sauna in Istanbul

Having been delayed, rerouted, and cancelled umpteen times, we spent a short night sleeping on the benches of the new Istanbul airport. But our eventual flight turned out to be in the next evening, so we asked for a hotel room for the day.

Turkish Airlines -- to their credit -- complied. But the hotel, Novotel Istanbul Zeytinburnu, was at the old Istanbul airport, an hours drive away, so some time was wasted on that. I didn't end up having any time for more sleep, but decided to burn my precious hours at the hotel in a better way: in their sauna.

It was quite a small shower & sauna space, but any sauna is better than nothing, so I was happy.

The weather was cold... snowing, actually. I didn't go the pool. But I did go out to the balcony from the sauna to see the pool. I ended up being locked out, however, and was just lucky that the cleaners happened to pass by so that I could come back, wrapped only in a towel in the freezing wind.

More sauna stories at Saunablogger.cool! Photos and text (c) 2020 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved. All sauna photos are taken with permission, when there have been no other guests, or when the facilities have been closed.

Kayseri. Sauna.

My main requirement for our hotel in Kayseri was that it should have a sauna... which is fortunately quite likely in Turkey.

We stayed at the Holiday Inn. Not the most famous local brand, but quite, quite good hotel in fact. I was very happy to stay there, even the hotel restaurant was excellent. And the sauna!

There was a steam sauna (of course) and a regular sauna, and changing rooms. And some chillout space with water etc available for drinking. Nice!

More sauna stories at Saunablogger.cool! Photos and text (c) 2020 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved. All sauna photos are taken with permission, when there have been no other guests, or when the facilities have been closed.

Desperately seeking... any cave

As we returned from the skiing in Israel, I wanted to stop at a cave in Israel. Most of the show caves are closed in the winter, but there should be enough natural caves to visit, right? Not so... we failed to enter the ones we found for various reasons.

Unfortunately, the cave that we had decided to visit in town of was inside museum grounds at the Berko Archelogical Park in Tiberias, on the shores of Sea of Galilee. Unfortunately, it turned out that everything is closed in Israel on Fridays. We kinda should have know, so we can only blame ourselves.

Tero and I hiked to the rocky hills behind the museum in the hopes of finding other caves, or perhaps an access to the cave, Пещера (coordinates N 32.773 E 35.543), that we were looking for behind the museum compounds. But there were no other caves high up on the hill, and the access down the hill was only over the cliff.

We came down and attempted to enter the area from another road. The hill behind the museum is visibly full of cave entrances. But this time we were unable to enter the original cave due to the area being fenced off. There would have been other, very interesting caves on the hill, but it would have required a hike through bushes that I at least felt I needed better shoes for. And our hiking shoes had been lost in the ski bags that never arrived in Israel...

In the end, we were running out of time to head back to the airport for our flight home; we aborted the mission and had to leave without entering a single cave in Israel. Sad.

See more caving stories at planetcaver.net, and see other articles by the planetskier at Blogspot and TGR! Photos and text (c) 2020 by Jari Arkko and Tero Kivinen. All rights reserved.

Map map

I have now put up all my Finnish cave maps at the Planetcaver site. There's maps for 34 different caves, almost all of which are in the Kirkkonummi area. A few maps are in the works.

The maps are laid on a Google Maps map, so it should be easy to browse the different locations and the available maps.

The maps link is https://planetcaver.net/mapmap.html. In addition, there are the regular caving blog stories at Planetcaver.net: https://planetcaver.net/ and a worldwide map of all my cave excursions here: https://planetcaver.net/geo.html.

This article has also been published at Teton Gravity Research (TGR). See more caving stories at planetcaver.net, and see other articles by the planetskier at Blogspot and TGR! Photos and text (c) 2020 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.

Miracle in Kayseri

Despite one diversion, one unplanned return to origin, one cancellation, and one delay, our ski bags arrived in Kayseri. What a miracle in the airline system!

Kudos to Turkish Airlines.

And all flying articles are of course at Planetflier.net! You can also read all the Planetskier and Planetcaver articles at Blogspot and TGR. Photos, videos, and text (c) 2020 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.

New brakes

Somewhere behind the wheel are the new working, unrusted brakes and suspension. Estimate was 300€, actual bill 1300€. Apparently many hours of work to remove the old junk.

Photos and text (c) 2020 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved. More stories at the Planetskier Blog.

Grani still going strong, even in bad winter

While coming back from the grocery store, I swing by the local ski hill in Kauniainen. To my amazement, they were up and running, with a bit more than half of the slope covered by snow.

Despite the most terrible winter weather ever. Respect!

For more Planetskier stories, check out Planetskier.Net, Blogspot, and TGR. Photos and text (c) 2020 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.

Skis came home

Ha! Skibag returned home. It got left behind last Wednesday evening as we were leaving for Israel, due to a baggage handler strike in Helsinki.

The bag then followed us for no reason to Israel on the same plane we left from there. I think the airline read our email about the skis yesterday and today they brought the skis back from Israel and to me.

For more Planetskier stories, check out Planetskier.Net, Blogspot, and TGR. Photos and text (c) 2020 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.