Training trip at Tiirismaa

I spent last weekend hauling pulka at Tiirismaa region near Lahti. At 222,6 meters Tiirismaa is the highest hill in the Southern Finland. There used to be a skiing center but it was shut down in 1990s. Me and fellow Ultima Thule skiers Matias and Olli found Tiirismaa to be a great training ground for Svalbard expedition.

On Saturday around midday we met in a little cáfe near Tiirismaa and headed to the hill. We donned our gear and skis and set off. Me and Matias had winter expedition style gear for an overnighter trip plus extra weights for training and testing purposes. My Paris Expedition pulka weighted around 40 kil altogether. Matias’ Fjellpulken sled was loaded a bit heavier and Olli’s huge custom-made sled, weighting around 15 kilo alone, was loaded with 40 kilo of plastic pellets and some gear for the day.

My Paris Expedition pulka in 40kg training load.

Skiing uphill with this kind of weights requires a lot of grip. We all had Madshus Voss skis with the MGV+ wax free bases but waxed or wax free bases don’t provide enough grip for hauling heavy sleds on steep slopes. I had new Madshus Intelligrip skins for test. I started with the Intelligrips but found very soon that they had less grip than the MGV+ bases have for 100 kg skier. Judging by this experience, Intelligrip skins seem like a good idea for leisure skiing without pulka or skiing with backpack on a relatively level terrain. But for training, I switched to full length mohair skins just like Olli and Matias had done from the start.

Preparing for some repeated ascent. Full length skin visible on the other ski.

The afternoon was spent skiing up and down an old ski lift track, stopping for a drink and snack after each descent. The old slalom slopes are growing thick bush but the ski lift track was kept clear and offered over 80 meters of ascent to the top of the hill. Skiing up took about an average of 25 minutes and coming down was a lot faster but caused occasionally some stumbling and cursing on my part. Matias is an old down hill skier so he had no problem and Olli decided to run down without skis… The Fjellpulken fibreglass shafts that I use in my pulka held up fine even when the pulk tried to pass me with its 40 kg mass when I stumbled. With five repetitions we totalled over 400 meters of elevation gain during the day.

Matias and Olli skiing up the old ski lift track

The temperature was barely below zero and there was only a slight breeze. The day was cloudy and it is still January in the Northern hemispere so eventually it started to get dark. Olli packed his gear and headed home (regretting his decision) while Matias and me pitched the tent, lit the stoves and started to cook supper. We had a big pot of peasoup and piles of pancakes with coffee. You can’t go wrong with cozy tent, loads of food and good company.

We had pitched the tent in a bit sloppy manner using just the six staking points in the ends of Matias’ Hilleberg Keron 3 GT and left the four guy lines on each side unstaked. In the evening we noticed that wind was rising and the tent started to flap a bit. During the night I woke up couple of times. Mostly because of the tent flapping loudly and once to open the zipper of my sleeping bag. A winter bag with 1420 grams of quality Polish down is a bit over kill for -4 Celsius but that is what I am taking for Svalbard also and it was good to test it also in the milder temps.

No wonder that it felt windy! The next day we had to maneuver some fallen trees, there was a lot of fallen tree branches on the snow and later the weather data from near by Asikkalanharju shoved average wind speeds closing 20 m/s during the night!

Wind data from the time of the over night trip. No wonder if it felt windy! Source: fmi.fi

After breakfast we broke the camp and headed once again up the ski lift track. Instead of skiing back down we toured around the hill our provoking wonder and questions in bypassing skiers. Temperature was couple of degrees below zero, the skies started to clear and sun was shining on frost and snow-covered tree tops and he wind made little ice crystals in the birches jingle. It was just awesome! Not just sweating and training for a distant goal but enjoying the physical strain, good company, hot chocolate and beauty of the nature.

You could hear the thousand little ice crystal jingling in the tree tops.

On the way we did some off trail skiing, passed a swamp with nice wilderness feel in it and about three and half hours later ended up to the backyard of Matias’ house. During Sunday we gained some 200 meters of ascent.

Matias negotiating way around fallen tree near the top of the hill.

There is a beautiful view from the top of the Tiirismaa hill and the area itself was really beautiful, at least in winter time.The area is full of ski tracks in winter and trails in summer. I recommend visiting it for a day trip or overnighter if you happen to be close by. I was told that it is also great area for mountain biking.

View from the top of Tiirismaa hill.

Go out! Enjoy the nature! It is beautiful out there, even on strange places like old bush growing slalom slopes.

The 327 meters high link mast on top of Tiirismaa is the highest building in Finland. But not a beauty for the eye.

Next… An overview on Ultima Thule 2011 expedition gear, hopefully followed with more detailed gear reports.

Now also on twitter!

Now you can also follow me on Twitter. There is also the Twitter-widget shoving the latest tweets in the right frame of the blog.

I am not planning to tweet about my daily doings and goings, but I am testing Twitter as a way to stay connected when in the outdoors beyond adequate Internet connections for blogging. I will send some test Tweets on weekend while pulling sledges at Tiirismaa.

If some one knows whether an Iridium satellite phone works with Twitter or not, please leave a comment!

Ultima thule 2011 meeting

Though it is still over two months until departure, The Ultima Thule 2011 Svalbard expedition starts to be somewhat ready to leave gear and preparation wise. For me the two moths of extra time is useful for getting into shape after a knee injury last year.

The expedition has only two official meetings before leaving. The first meeting was a planning meeting with some shooting drills in October.

Ari shooting plates with a pump-action shotgun in our October meeting.

Because there happens to be polar bear in Svalbard, everybody has to know how to handle a rifle and shotgun. In addition to these two long guns we have also one revolver and a pen flare gun to fend of the bears in necessary. When we camp on or near sea ice, we will have a bear watch trough the night, but otherwise we just stay prepared and keep the guns easily accessible.

About two weeks ago we had our second and last meeting, the so-called Final test. We started with a meeting at hotel Tallukka. We discussed about all major issues like logistics to and in Svalbard, final schedules, medical issues, gear acquisitions and sponsors, etc. After a lunch we drove to small harbor of Padasjoki for a short over-nighter.

The expedition on skis

As it was getting dark (it is still mid winter) we skied only a bit under two hours before putting up the camp. The weather was great: sun shine, crisp temperature somewhere below -20 C and no wind. Some wind might have been good training wise, but it was more enjoyable that way. Only problem was that there was some water between the ice and the layer of  snow so occasionally skis and sledges got wet and froze. While skiing we saw a big herd of black-grouses flying in the horizon.

As usual, we spent the evening in a warm tent, occasionally visiting out for photos. I tested expedition sized meals with my tent mate Matias and we found out that we can likely eat huge amounts of food in Svalbard. A two liter pot full of food seasoned with butter seems to be a decent portion for two.

Ursa major above the camp.

The weather forecast had promised cold weather – and that was what we got. We had already put out the stoves and got into our cozy down sleeping bags when I heard some steps outside and asked what was the reading in the thermometer. It was -33 C After a little mental struggle I got out of my personal warm haven, put on my boots and down jacket and went to take a picture of the thermometer. The camera didn’t seem to like too much about the  -33 C but after warming up the battery for a while it came to life.

We got good arctic temperatures: -33 C!

After taking the picture I dived back to my sleeping bag and fell asleep hugging my hot water bottle.

We woke up at 7.00 am and after morning chores broke the camp and started skiing at 9.00 am. This is the typical rhythm on expedition. Usually the day consists of seven or eight legs, each being 50 minutes of skiing with 10 minutes break with a bit longer lunch break in the middle of the day. But we had only a short stretch to ski and didn’t take any breaks.

The dawn was beautiful and intensively red but  for a while my camera objected the idea of working after such a cold night, so unfortunately I missed to most intense parts of the sun rise. The camera itself works but the batteries simply stop working when it is really cold. I have ordered a battery grip that enables using Lithium AA batteries on cold days. They should wok fine down to -40 C.

Skiing back to our cars with beautiful sunrise.

After packing up and starting a car with jump wires we went for of coffee and headed back home. While packing I picked up my keys from the car to put them two my pocket. As the temperature had already risen to near -20 C I didn’t have my gloves on while packing so managed to get a little white frost bite to my finger. The metal keys were still quite cold…

I have still some things to arrange concerning gear and food for the expedition but at least things are pretty well planned and most of the gear is tested and works well. For example I spent the night in my down sleeping bag only and it seems to be plenty warm for the expedition. But to protect the down from moisture I still need a synthetic filling bag to fit over the down bag. And as my down bag is an extra-large special order bag, I would also need a XL sized top bag and those are hard to find. So there are still things to do…

The next thing is another training and testing trip this weekend with Matias. We will be skiing with weighted sledges at Vesijärvi near Lahti, and maybe do some hill training in the old ski slopes of Tiirismaa to test the new skins. Expect a trip report in the beginning of next week.

The meaning of gear?

As the halfway ready trip report about Lake Inari vanished to cyberspace, I will instead take part to the current hot topic: the meaning and role of the gear. As everything in the blog, these are my personal opinions.

Hendrik started the current round of conversation with his post Who is the lightest of them all?. This conversation raises regularly on forums where lightweight/UL and more traditional backpackers meet and it can even turn into a loud debate. But now the discussion is raised among light/UL backpackers themselves and there it turns out to be pretty interesting. See for example Dave’s response: (re)Defining Lightweight Backpacking. These two posts have gathered great comments from readers and are definitely worth the reading, if you are interested in the topic.

Clothing for a five day skiing trip in Lapland in January.

 

For most of the time I seem to be almost obsessed by gear. But my relationship to it is somewhat complex and luckily my life is not all about the gear.

I spend a lot of time tuning my gear, making speculative gear lists, surfing the net in search for new and interesting gear, reading gear reviews and learning smart ways how other people get the most out of their gear (or manage with minimal amount of gear). For me this serves at least two purposes.

First of all: I like long trips, at least a weekend long or preferably a week long ones or longer but because of studies and work I don’t have time to do these trips as often as I’d wish. The gear freakiness is a way to extrapolate my outdoor hobbies into home and office (Don’t tell them…) and offers short escapes from the mundane reality. Planning a trip, writing trip reports and editing photos serve also the same purpose and in a way they become hobbies inside a hobby.

For me the “gear hobby” is about thriving for perfection while trying to get the optimal outcome for a (too) wide variety of situations. This means compromises, and when making compromises there are endless possibilities for variation. But luckily I don’t get endlessly stuck to a certain project. It seems that I keep on adjusting and refining certain gear to the point that I am either happy with the performance or I get plain bored with the constant refining and settle with what I have.

Second, I believe that being aware of all the nice gear and the ways to use it can also offer a better nature experience. Not necessarily but possibly. And at least the long awaited trip is less likely to be ruined by gear. But gear can also ruin the nature experience if one concentrates solely to the gear and forgets the beauty of the nature. This can be caused by wrong gear that doesn’t work properly (Waterproofs not being waterproof while on a one week trip in the fells.), having not enough gear (Try forgetting a shell jacket when going climbing…) or having too much gear (That’s why I’m lightening up: to see the butterfly.)

But the gearcentricity can also be caused by one’s mind alone. This is something that backpackers on the lighter side are often accused. But I think that the judgment is highly distorted when based on blogs, forums and other forms of virtual communication. When sitting in front of a computer one is not able to enjoy the nature and gear becomes an easy topic. It is hard to write about the deep emotions experienced while out there. But this doesn’t mean that the gram shaving backpacker would not see and appreciate the beauty of the natures and experiences it can offer.

When I am out there on a trip, I don’t spend too much time thinking about my gear. Of course I make occasional remarks on it, especially if I have new gear with me or something doesn’t work as planned. But for me the optimal situation with gear would be that I wouldn’t even need to think of it when hiking. The gear would just be there, work as planned, enabling whatever I’d like to do and not slowing me down. I think that one can, and likely will, occasionally manage something close to this state. And that is a higher degree of freedom.

I am on my way to that state, or at least trying, but luckily the journey itself is as nice one as the destination.

So, eventually for me gear is on the other hand another hobby and on the other hand only means to an end.

What does it mean to you?

Blog finally online!

Hello, everyone!

After a way too long time of procrastination I have finally managed to set up a blog! There will be likely some changes during the following weeks as I tweak the blog but at least the stuff is now online.

While waiting for the first real post, which will be a trip report from Lake Inari in Lapland, please take a look at the pages on the top to find out more about me and about my current major project.