Skiing the Planet

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

Kettils Grotta

Kettils Grotta (Kettil's cave) near the Rosersbergs Castle for an evening hike in the darkness and rain.

Read more about this place from Wikipedia. The coordinates of the cave are: N 59.573 E 17.827.

Tuesday, January 14, 2020

Rain Blues

It's 160 feet to the top, we’ve got rain, no snow in this half of the country, it’s dark out, and we’re wearing sunglasses. Hit it.

All this happened at Peuramaa. Earlier articles can be found here playground, season, darkness, opening day, golfers, and drone. Photos (c) 2020 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved. My skiing stories can be found from Blogspot and Teton Gravity Research, as well as of course Planetskier.Net!

Lost keys

Remember how I broke my Volvo keys last week? This week, obviously, I lost the remaining key...

Well, I thought I lost them. I later found them on the door of the car in the parking log, had been there the whole day.

Phew, but what a stupid thing to do. Can't afford to lose more keys!

New Year, New Volvo Troubles

Another Volvo story, now from the 2020s...

Morning: New year, new Volvo troubles. First the battery is out, not sure why. I go for the charger in trunk, but can't get there because there's no power for central locking. Try the key, key snaps. Now buying new charger at Motonet, where I got a ride from the repair guys who were picking up the snowblower that blew up yesterday. Neither them or any neighbours have starter cables.

Evening: On the positive side, it is nice to walk to the train in beautiful southern Finland winter weather:

Later: Charging now let's see if it will help:

Also, I think I identified the problem - indoor light switch in wrong position, used the battery in two days.

Midnight: Its alive!

Next day: Today's F-word is "Flu" :-( Didn't help to walk in the rain yesterday.

Monday, January 6, 2020

My massive crash in the Ylläs 24H

During the Ylläs 24h race in 2019, around 2am I was heading down the Worldcup run at, I guess, at a bit over hundred kilometres an hour. And then something happened. I lost my skis, I tumbled, and hit myself to the icy slope pretty hard.

When I came about I was on lower on the slope, in full yard sale form. I collected a pole or two and sat down on the side of the slope. I thought I had broken something. But amazingly, I was just having some bad feelings from my back to head and the limbs, but nothing seemed to be broken. Also, my giant slalom racing skis were tuned for DIN 10, and I had not really known if they would open in a crash, as I usually keep my bindings at DIN 7 or 8. But they did, that's good news. Otherwise I might had broken a number of bones...

In a couple of minutes the race organisers showed up in their snowmobile and asked if I was ok. I said I was, and they gave me my skis from higher up. I skied very carefully down, and decided that I need to take a break and see if I'm really OK. I ended up visiting the sauna in the race facility, and watching the racers fly by in the darkness.

I also considered whether I should rejoin the race after that, but decided that it is better if I try to sleep a few hours.

But sleeping was difficult. There are several hotels in the area, but since I had thought I wouldn't need any, I started calling the hotels and found out that none of their receptions were 24/7. In the end, I slept maybe 6 hours in my car under a sleeping bag, occasionally waking up and heating it up the car a bit. It was a cold night.

In the morning I felt better and re-joined the race. This was my first crash in this race, though, having been there now four or five times.

Kicking myself for not skiing Kosovo

I was skiing in Kopaonik, Serbia, to collect yet another country that I've skied in :-) but on the way back I made a HUGE mistake.

The road back to airport touches the border of Kosovo for a few hundred meters. I had asked about this from the hotel, and they felt it was illegal and risky to cross the border. So I didn't.

Granted, there is the question of the recent war, hostilities, distrust, possible border patrol or military troops. And for my statistics, it is not clear how Kosovo would be counted, given the notion of a "partially recognised" state. But, I don't think there was anybody looking at that piece of snowy mountainside. I could have taken a few turns. Why didn't I?

This article has also been published at TGR. And all skiing articles are of course at Planetskier.net! You can also read all the Planetskier and Planetcaver articles at Blogspot and TGR. Photos, videos, and text (c) 2019 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.

Small cave in Obertauern

While skiing off the Gamsleiten 2 ski lift in Obertauern, we spotted a potential small cave. It was outside the pistes on a steep slope, but I skied to investigate. And found what would in Finland be classified as a cave: 2-3 meter long roof cave on a cliff. But not in Austria...

Coordinates: N 47.2406 E 13.5545.

Kugelbunker

At the Vienna museum of military history (Heeresgeschichtliches Museum ), we saw a funny "kugelbunker", a concrete boulder for one person shelter from the world war times.

There was also a hole. Probably not the best, if any protection...

See more urban exploration and caving stories at theurbanexplorer.net and planetcaver.net, and see other articles by the Planetskier at Blogspot and TGR! Photos and text (c) 2019 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.

Österreichisches Saunaerlebnis

Our quick start for year 2020 involved skiing in the Austrian alps, about an hour south of Salzburg. We found a nice, affordable hotel, LUFA in St. Michael im Lungau. While being affordable at only a bit more than 100€ per night, it had nice sauna facilities.

There were three saunas, a steam sauna, an infrared sauna, and my favourite (of course), the Finnish sauna. Quite hot, and as long as one conformed to Austrian style of going to sauna's, it was quite nice. You'll have to have a towel underneath you, even under your feet if you're sitting. And it is a mixed sauna.

I really liked the location for skiing in different places in the region, easy to get to, no mountain roads to drive for the hotel. Much recommended. Here's the google maps location link.

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

Re-visiting the Vienna flak towers

I was in Vienna already in 2018, but for 2020 Janne and I toured the Vienna museums before heading to the ski resorts in Austrian alps. This allowed a new visit to Haus des Meeres, the refurbished bunker-turned-into-and-aquarium, and visits to three other bunkers.

It turned out that Haus des Meeres had been renovated to be almost no longer recognisable as a bunker. Still, they had a tour of the bunker side, but sadly our timing didn't allow staying for that. Maybe next time.

We also visited the control tower pair of the Haus des Meeres flak tower at Esterhazypark (the latter held the guns). Sadly, we could see the control tower, Flakturm Stiftskaserne, but no get closer due to it being inside a closed city block. The coordinates for the bunker are: N 48.2016 E 16.3560.

Secondly, we visited the control-flak tower pair in Arenbergpark. The coordinates for the bunkers are N 48.1981 E 16.3906 (control tower) and N 48.1986 E 16.3926 (flak/gun tower).

The location of all the Flaktowers built in 2nd World War can be found from the Wikipedia page. Towers were only built in Berlin, Hamburg, and Vienna, although there were plans to add more to München, Bremen, and other cities.

Today these structures remain in view to remind of us of the horrors of war. We think of ourselves are educated and civilised, but there's ample evidence that societies can convince themselves to build horrible weapons of war and rage insane and immoral battles that leave tens of millions of people dead. It is everyone's responsibility to make sure this does not happen again.

Arenbergpark:

Stiftskaserna:

Haus des Meeres:

This article has also been published at TGR. Read more Urban Exploration and Caving stories from TheUrbanExplorer.net and PlanetCaver.net! You can also read all the Planetskier and Planetcaver articles at Blogspot and TGR. Photos and text (c) 2020 by Jari Arkko and Janne Arkko. All rights reserved.