Skiing the Planet

Thursday, February 17, 2022

Lounge Closed

SAS, what did you do???

For once, I'm flying with lounge privileges... and there's no lounge. Oh well.

For once I'm flying on Lufthansa. Felt a bit like ... not using my own airline. But there was no option for this trip to Cyprus. And therefore, no breakfast at the lounge. However, the morning views as we lifted off from Helsinki-Vantaa airport (HEL) were spectacular!

And the breakfast in the plane was good:

Helsinki:

Tuesday, February 15, 2022

Sunset at the Troodos mountains

These views from Troodos Mountains in Cyprus are ... not too shitty, as we say in Finland.

Cyprus Sauna

What do you do when you arrive in a new place? I always go check out the sauna...

This time I was in Cyprus, staying a few days at the Harmony Bay Hotel. I picked this hotel as it did indeed have a sauna!! Not too many hotels actually do in Cyprus... And it was pretty good, I got to use the sauna alone without any Corona-danger from a rush of gym users (perhaps due to the low winter season). And the sauna was good, certainly warm enough!

Sadly, that was the only time I was able to use the sauna during my stay, oddly they refused to heat it up after 7pm, and I was never back at the hotel by then... too many interesting ski or cave things to visit :-)

For more sauna and swimming stories, check out planetswimmer.com and saunablogger.cool websites! And of course the Planetcaver, and Planetskier blogs for other stories in Blogspot and TGR! The photos and text (c) 2022 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved. I never take photos of other saunagoers or swimmers and visit when there is simply no one else or the facility has been closed or booked only for me.

Cyclop's Cave

I had an opportunity to visit Cyprus this week, and, of course, there were also some caves. The Cyclop's Cave is on the south-east end of the island, a nice 23 m x 24 m cave with a sand floor and a thin rock cover above. Right on the beach, with great sunset views. But this is also likely not the "real" Cyclop's cave from the historic tales, that is in Greece.

I also managed to make a lidar scan and produce a basic map using my "Cave Outliner" software. A picture of the map is below, but for the high-res PDF version use this link. Or if you want to rotate the 3D model on your screen, click here.

This article has also been published at 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) 2022 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.

Saturday, January 29, 2022

Eduskuntatalo fail

I have long wanted to ski the Parliament House stairs. And I thought today's "Valtteri" winter storm was the perfect opportunity to do that. However... when I got to the chairs, it turned out they are being heated, and snow-free even in a once-in-a-decade storm. Sigh. What a letdown. And maybe also waste of energy :-)

Fortunately, I found some skiing at the Temppeliaukio Rock Church.

I also got stuck twice on the way home ...

Stuck with the car

I called Tero while driving back home from Valtteri-storm ski explorations. When I was nearing home, I told him that I'm only fifty meters from home and safely back without car incidents, and hung up. Twenty meters later I got stuck :-) not having yet made home.

After some sweaty manual snow-plowing I got the car unstuck and was able to get home.

Knee testing

Today is the first time I'm on skis, after starting to have knee pains since the beginning of the year. A test on the local hill. Wish me luck!

On the hill, the knee felt good. But afterwards I had some pains. Now on the next day, it feels good again. Not sure what to think of this.

Hopefully it is on the mend.

Monday, January 17, 2022

Caver's meetup in -17 degrees

Caver’s meetup, warm even if -17 and interesting short films at Kino Jalasjärvi. And my Volvo made it 350 km away, furthest it has been! But will it last the way back? The summer’s trip reliability was 85% - what we call in the industry with the technical term “almost one nine reliability”. So the odds are pretty good!

I held a presentation on how to generate cave maps from 3D models. The presentation is here.

Our hosts had built an amazing lean-to (laavu) and it was a lot of fun having a big fire there, grilling sausages and chatting. See at the top and below!

I also managed to visit in Kollinluola, and make a scan/map of it. See here.

Trip:

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) 2021-2022 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.

First publication in a Swedish caving magazine!

My article on 3D modelling in Lummelunda was published in the Swedish Caver's Association's 'Grottan' (cave) magazine. Nice! The magazine was delivered to me rolled :-)

For the actual topic, if you don't have access to the magazine, see my earlier post which talked about some aspects of this.

Grottan can be ordered here.