Volvo gets back from 2 week gentle care

 

Volvo, March edition: more metal, less holes. 

Back from two weeks at the garage, legal for an additional year of adventures. Some welding done, also changed some components, such as for the transmission problem we replaced the engineer to one who can shift gears in an old car. Emissions fixed themselves after a reboot. Thousand for the two weeks of care and the loaner.

Kauniainen cave with a view

Cave of the sunset! I guess this just goes to show that no matter how well you know something, there are things you don't yet know. I did a snowshoes hike between Kauniainen and the Glims museum area, and came across a new cave!

Small, of course, but something I'd personally consider the 2nd best cave in Kauniainen, given that we don't have much caves. I also didn't initially know if the cave was inside Kauniainen's borders or not, but after consulting the map it is indeed in Kauniainen. And I happened to be at the right time at the cave, as sitting in the cave opening one could see a beautiful sunset above the Glims fields..

I think we could fit 2, maybe even 3 people in this cave. The cave consists of two parts, the crack, and the underside of the boulder. The crack is a horizontal crack in the cliff face, with the inside of the crack being higher than the front, creating a bit of a cave-like feeling. It may be possible to crawl from the crack to the underside of the boulder while keeping away from rain, but it is tight. So one could say the two parts are connected or not connected, depending on your opinion.

The crack is maybe 2.5 meters long, although I did not measure it. It has a part that goes maybe 1.5 meters into the cliff face, for the rest the crack is maybe a meter deep and 50-70 cm high. On the outward face the height of the crack is at points level with the crack height inside and very low (20cm) on other parts.

Approximate map (not drawn to scale):

The map is also available in PDF. The cave can be found under the large bould in coordinates N 60.218096 E 24.690935.

The crack:

Under the boulder:

Sunset:

Read more urban exploration stories from theurbanexplorer.net, and other underground stories from planetcaver.net. Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot or TGR. Photos and text (c) 2021 by Jari Arkko and Jarmo Ruuth. All rights reserved.

First repair

 

One repair done, eight left. The Volvo goes today to the shop, not for repairs but for evaluation of repairs. I have 22 days left before it goes illegal.

Shop manager’s opinion: “we are faced with serious questions” 🙂 always a good sign 🙂

Impulse shopping

Lunch break impulse shopping. My first snow shoes!

First trip in the garden during the break, the second on nearby forests and hills. Very nice, easier and lighter than I expected. Good exercise though. Will do this every day now :-)

The shoes also fit my ski boots well.

Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot or TGR. Photos, videos, and text (c) 2021 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.

Yet Another Abandoned Ski Area

While looking for ski areas I could go ski at, I came across a nearby ski hill that I had not even heard about: Klaukkala's Tornikeskus, or Tower Hill. Unfortunately, they just closed permanently. That doesn't mean I couldn't go ski there, of course :-)

It has been a nice hill, still used for hike-up-stairs, hiking trails, and downhill bike riding. And there are a few resilient snowboarders practicing their jumps. The lifts are frozen in place, but still equipped with cables and bars. Here's hoping that someone will take over the business are re-open the area.

There wasn't much snow, however, so I opted for skiing down the least rocky part, the lift track. But it was icy, and there were a few rocks even on this path. Well, managed to get down nevertheless.

You can find Tornikeskus and Tornimäki at N 60.365439 E 24.758202.

The visit here reminded me also of what Tero and I found years ago in Chile, at Arenales.

This article has also been published at TGR. Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot or TGR. Photos, videos, and text (c) 2021 by Jari Arkko.

Be the ski lift

 

Today’s exercise was to be the ski lift for sister’s twins as they tried out skiing for the first time on a small hill (not visiting a ski resort yet, this was a more relaxed setting). They made lot of progress, snowplough, turns, how to fall, etc. Fun day!

We were at the hill for the Tuusula sports center in Hyrylä. Nice place. Coordinates: N 60.38947 E 25.03185.

Also, an interesting thing happened. 27 year old Nordica boots gave away... bottom half of the boots disintegrated as the kids walked few meters to the car. Amazing, I usually like to keep my boots longer than this :-)

Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot or TGR. Photos, videos, and text (c) 2021 by Jari Arkko.

Volvo is shedding parts

... again. This time only the mirror, however. And it fell on soft snow on my own yard. Good.

I will have to re-glue it.

LiDAR 3D modelling caves and bunkers

I continued my earlier underground tests with iPhone 12 Pro's LiDAR sensor and software. This time I started testing the 3D modelling software. Can we produce an accurate 3D model of a cave using these sensors and software?

I was wondering if the new sensors are toys for caving, good for nothing? Revolution about to happen? Or something in between? Has anyone else looked at these? 

Here are some test shots from my initial trials. The first is from the Högberget cave in Kirkkonummi: a photo, a 3D model generated by the "Polycam" App. Well, it is a video of model spinning around, but one can also get the full model out in various formats. The second one is another Polycam 3D model from a post-WW2 era Soviet bunker blown up in Porkkala in 1956.

Early observations: pretty interesting stuff, in many ways spectacular results. But also difficult to go from "nice first video" to "complete result that I can use". Even if one tries hard there's bound to be holes in walls or missing parts. Could perhaps be improved with better software or user. Perhaps more fundamentally, the phone sensors have a range of only 5 meters, and I think maybe in practice less. That may of course be enough for the Finnish caves 🙂

I've seen some videos of 3D models and cave point clouds, done with more professional equipment of course. Where are we on that, what can that equipment do, how do the more consumer grade things compare? What would be the 3D equivalent of the Disto X, some years into the future?

I tested a few different applications, but the one that I like best so far is Polycam. You can get video review of the model out of the free version of the app, but the full version can export a dozen formats, from OBJ, PTS, PLY, DAE, USDZ, STL, etc.

Högberget model:

Bunker model:

Tunnel:

The author:

This article has also appeared in TGR. Read more urban exploration stories from theurbanexplorer.net, and other underground stories from planetcaver.net. Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot or TGR. Photos, videos, and text (c) 2021 by Jari Arkko and Elena Arre. All rights reserved.

Looking for bunkers and all we found was SHIT

 

We drove in two cars to south end of the Porkkala peninsula -- 50 minutes away -- to explore three bunkers there. The best map that we have of the abandoned Soviet-era bunkers comes from Lynx, the local orienteering club. Unfortunately, this time their map oversold what was to be found at the location.

What we found was actually pretty basic old-style underground cellars, constructed from pieces of granite. And a round concrete container full of water or sewage... we did not taste it to make sure which one it was. The container may even be still in use for for the farmlands.

Just because something is underground doesn't make it a bunker. And just because something was in the Soviet-held area, doesn't mean it was built by them. And even if it was built by them, it doesn't make it a military installation -- many houses, roads, basements, and probably also shit containers were also built.

Jarmo and I are marking these in our maps to make sure we don't attempt to visit them again. My map for urban exploration can be found here. Note that the location of these particular three items (basement 1, basement 2, ruins, container) have been slightly obfuscated, as there is no need for anyone to access them, being possibly private origin and ownership. The map shows an indicator when an item on the map is obfuscated.

Basement 1:

Basement 2:

Ruins:

Shit container:

Read more urban exploration stories from theurbanexplorer.net, and other underground stories from planetcaver.net. Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot or TGR. Photos and text (c) 2021 by Jari Arkko and Jarmo Ruuth. All rights reserved.

Högberget in LiDAR

 

We visited the Högberget cave today, to test drive the LiDAR sensor in the iPhone that got today. Pretty interesting!

Here's the video of walking through the small but spectacular cave, using the iPhone 12 Pro LiDAR sensor for recording the video:

This article has also appeared at TGR. See more caving stories at Planetcaver.net, and all Planetskier and Planetcaver stories at Blogspot and TGR! See also my cave map that runs the Psgeo software that has now been open sourced! Text, photos, and video (c) 2021 by Jari Arkko and Jarmo Ruuth. All rights reserved.