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 […]
What drives a sane person to shiver non-stop for four days and four nights, while not eating or sleeping and call it a holiday? Editors note: I’m privilege to have extra-ordinary friends who do amazing things. One of them is Huck, a fellow wilderness guide and founder of NordicByNature. He has earlier written quest posts […]
Since writing the post about New packrafting toys two years ago a lot has happened on the packrafting market. And on the other hand, not so much has happened: it’s still the same interesting growing niche sport. But, there are new boats worth a mention! New packrafts Alpackraft Gnu with Vectran fabric and sraydeck. Photo […]
Instead of writing about snow caves as I promised before, this post will be about simple emergency snow shelters as I happened to build a couple of them last weekend. I was not in an emergency but there is still a lot of snow out there and I had time – so why not? I […]
This is again a bilingual blog post about guiding services I am offering. / Tämä on jälleen kaksikielinen tiedote tarjoamistani opaspalveluista. This post is also to serve as a “commenting area” as the comments on pages are disabled. / Tämä tiedote palvelee myös kommentointi- ja keskustelualueena, sillä info-sivuilla ei voi kommentoida. Templet, Svalbard. Would you […]
The winter ain’t over yet! Even though the winter is definitly over in most of Finland, it ain’t over for me. At the moment I’m hurrying with some last-minute preparations for guiding a ski expedition across Vatnajökull, the largest glacier in Europe situated in South-East Iceland. Urttaslaakso (Käsivarsi wilderness, North-West Finland) on a holiday ski-tour […]
About a year ago I wrote about Spruce tips and my dreams living of the land. During the last year many things have changed and evolved but I’m still dreaming of partially living of the land in the future and because of that I have been doing some experiments with resources freely available from the […]
Not so long ago I wrote a post about different satellite communication devices available for outdoors use. And as many of the devices were brand new for the market there wasn’t too much user experiences available by the time. This is a follow-up and addition to the original post introducing some new satellite communication tools […]
When a one-week winter ski tour starts with heavy wind-driven rain you have to remind yourself why you like that stuff. This far I’ve always managed to convince myself that I’m doing what I really like and, fortunately, this time wasn’t an exception. In early March I was in Sarek National Park guiding the Advanced […]
Everything comes to an end. And so did the skiing season of the year 2012. (And as you might have guessed, this is not a trip report from Vatnajökull, sorry for that. It’s still under writing…) Doesn’t seem like skiing season, does it? Today was a great day! Probably the warmest day of the spring […]
“Monthly highlights” is a series of post concentrating on a 10-month wilderness guide course I am taking this year at Niittylahden opisto near Joensuu in Eastern Finland. These posts try to summarize the best parts of each month and are naturally published at the end of each month (or in the beginning of the following […]
I’ve mentioned once every now and then that my main tour of the winter will be a ski expedition across the Greenland ice cap – and it’s about to start right now! We will leave Finland behind on April 13th and arrive to Greenland the next day. And if all goes as planned we will […]
/ A word of warning: This post includes a lot of photos. They are nice and varied outdoors photos but there are many. You have been warned. / Foggy views from early 2014 at Taivalkoski. It’s time to look back on the past outdoor year and like in 2012 and 2011, photos are my media […]
All new Finnish made outdoor products are rare. Especially interesting and well working ones. This post is about one of the gems: OAC Kar 147 backcountry skis, or fastshoes, i.e. something between a snowshoe and a ski. In the post there is some background information, some numbers, my initial impressions and comparison to the Altai […]