Blog
Finland Snowboard Trip
Friday, 13 March 2009
Well, we finally made it to Finland this time. After our previous attempt in January had us turning up at the airport 6 hours late for our flight we arrived in plenty of time this time around.
Conditions out there were perfect...there was a good 70cm of base snow and then on the first day it dumped...for a full day! The temperature had also warmed up from the previous week and didn't go below -10 dgrees C and the winds were fairly light. We took a gamble with this destination as the Alps is our usual favoured destination but luckily it paid off big time.
The resort we stayed at was Yllas which is just inside the Arctic Circle and it is a full on arctic wonderland. All the roads are covered in hard packed snow, everyone uses snow mobiles on the roads, pavements...everywhere. We even landed on a snow covered runway when we flew in.
On the first day we set off on the drag lift (there's lots of them) up the hill and it was full on white out blizzard conditions and about -20 degrees...and yes we were thinking what are we doing here! Anyway, we made it up another drag further into the clouds and then hiked about 20 mins over the top of the hill to the other side. We then descended blind down a piste until we finally dropped below the cloud line and spotted our destination...a large woodland at the far side of the resort.
As soon as we saw the trees we knew we had found the spot that would pretty much keep us entertained for the whole week. There was about a foot of fresh powder already in there with another foot coming down that day. It was perfect...
We pretty much spent the first three days just hammering the fresh stuff in the trees and to be honest carried on doing this unti about day 4. On day 4, to mix things up a bit, we hit the board park which over there it is badged as 'Street' which is quite cool. There's loads of boxes and rails to hit along with some huge kickers...which were way to be for us. We had a play here for a while but in true freeride spirit we decided to go off and look for some natural stuff to jib.
One of our favourite spot was the spot above. It was a flatbank onto a vert tree. It was great..you tanked it down the piste and tried to get as high up the tree as you could before either springing off and riding out switch or 180ing round and riding out normal. The pic above is of me half way round a 180 revert off the tree...and yes we did take a few slams that day!
Finally, a unique thing we found in Finland was that dotted about the hill were wooden shelters with a log fire that the Fins used for sheltering from the cold and cooking up all kinds of things on the fire for their lunch. Once we saw them doing this on the first day we were hooked and joined in every day with this local finnish tradition. Hmm...SAUSAGES!
| Comments |
|
