Finland Wilderness Training - Day 6: A real ice hotel

There had been plenty of bravado.  A night out on the ice in an emergency snow shelter built by our own hard work felt exactly like the sort of experience we had conjured up in our imaginations before this trip, which took us up close to the Arctic Circle in Finland.  At least I had.  At dinner, in the warmth of the dining room at base camp, we’d talked through how to arrange the space in the quinzee (the proper word for an emergency snow shelter) to create as comfortable a night as possible.  At 11pm, as we gathered our rucksacks and thin rollup mats, the mood was distinctly less macho.

It had taken 7 hours of hard shoveling to create our shelter which was essentially a great pile of snow about 8 feet high which you compress and then excavate, removing probably 60% of the stuff you just spent hours constructing.    You stomp about on the top of the pile at various points to pack it all down and then leave it to ‘rest’ for a bit. This provides enough time to have a cup of soup and attempt to thaw out and dry our kit around a fire.  Part two involves getting down on your hands and knees and burrowing your way in to the middle of it to create a kind of cave.  It is hard work and quite boring work and, because you spend much of your time in direct contact with the ice, you get very wet and very cold.  Hence, I think, the collective memory leading to the hesitation to leave the [relative] comfort of Basecamp after dinner and make our way down to the woods and back onto the ice.  There was also the chance we might suffocate during the night if we hadn’t made the air hole in the top of the structure large enough (the guide was smiling as he told us this so I figured that they hadn’t actually lost anyone that way yet) or that the walls might collapse if we had hollowed the space out too much. Both these things played on my mind as I made my way in the darkness across the ice.

We had worked efficiently and productively in the small team allocated to our shelter and this camaraderie continued as we discussed the best approach to organizing our mats and bedding on the ice-mattress inside the quinzee.  Arranging the sleeping bags we agreed who would sleep where and in what order people would settle in so that there was space to undress and slide into ones sleeping bag without inadvertently giving someone a black eye.  With the sleeping bags laid out, the rucksacks as pillows and with a small torch positioned as a night light it looked surprisingly cosy.   Shuffling  backwards down the tunnel and back onto the ice we stood in a small semi-circle looking up at the night sky. The moon was not yet up, the inky blackness above us was scattered with more stars than could possibly be counted and whch trickled in long strands down to the horizon.  Someone had brought a flask of Bourbon and pouring some into a cup, they chilled it with snow and passed it round.  As my turn comes I took a sip which was at the same time freezing cold and fiery hot.  As I tilted back my head and looked upwards the stars flickered and pulsed in tones of gold and green and blue.

We stood for quite some time, occasionally stamping our feet to keep warm. Then someone pointed out, low on the horizon, a haze of palest green and yellow light gently shimmering and fading, then appearing once again.  As we watch it changed slowly to a pale mulberry red and then to green and yellow again.  We think we are seeing a very minor display of the Northern Lights.  It is ridiculous how pleased we are. 

A little bit later, inside the snow-shelter it’s about minus five, which feels very comfortable compared to the minus fifteen outside.  It’s easily warm enough to shed all our layers down to our base fleece and take off our boots.  As we all lay there, in a row, in the gentle light of the torch, I realize that what seemed like an even floor is scattered with lumps and bumps of ice which stick into my shoulder and hips.  I turn over and face the wall but the air so close to the snow is too cold to comfortably breathe.  Turning onto my other side my hip falls into a depression in the snow which twists my back painfully.  I turn over again.  I listen to the rhythmic sound of breathing from the others but I still lay there, uncomfortable and unable to drift into sleep.  One o’clock comes and goes and I force myself not to keep turning so that I don’t disturb the others.  My nose keeps itching but the effort to get one of my arms out of the sleeping bag to scratch it takes too much effort so I turn my head and push my face into the strap of my rucksack which helps with the itch a bit.   At 2am I am still awake and trying not to listening too closely to the snow walls creaking and worrying about them caving in.  Somewhere outside the ice cracks loudly.  At 3am, knowing I have a long day out in the arctic tomorrow, I decide to bail out and see whether I can get a few hours sleep in my cabin so slowly I unzip my sleeping bag which sounds loud in the darkness. My arm grazes the wall and snow falls into my face and down my fleece.  I pull on my boots and decide, rather than dress in full and chance waking everyone up, I will put on just one layer over my base fleece and use my sleeping bag as insulation from the cold while I make my way back quickly across the ice.  I shuffle slowly off the ice mattress and down the tunnel into the open.  Standing up and holding my rucksack in one hand and clutching my sleeping bag tightly around me with the other, I stand for a few minutes gazing up at the night sky where the moon has risen and hangs like a beautiful silver medallion in the blackness. All is silent and still.  I feel like a tiny insignificant dot in this most amazing universe. The cold quickly begins to seep through my layers, my hands are cold through the gloves and so I turn, and make my way back the quarter of a mile to my cabin.  Just before I head into the trees at the edge of the lake, I turn around to take a final look, and see the fading end of a shooting star.  In the warmth of my cabin, under my reindeer skin, I fall quickly asleep.

Finland Wilderness Training - Day 5: Falling off a chairlift, going home with Rudolph.

Today we are downhill skiing in Ruka.  As we wind our way along the narrow forest road away from base camp, the snow is deep around us and hangs, in precarious swathes along the tree branches.  We see a break in the clouds and wonder if the weather, at last, is turning.  It lasts for a moment and then the clouds meet once more and the brief ray of sunshine is lost.  It takes about 25 minutes to get to Ruka. The town centre is very small and offers the usual range of ski resort shops and restaurants.  As we step out of the minibus I can see that there is a white-out.  I am not sure whether it’s worth going up but also not sure what I will do in Ruka for 5 hours if I don’t.  A couple of skiers who have just come down give me an update - it’s limited visibility at the top they say, but the snow  conditions are good. First I check the quality of the equipment in the hire shop, the skis are nearly new and the edges are sharp so I decide to take the punt.  It’s the first time I have been on downhill skis for nearly five years and as we walk to the first quad lift my arms are already tired from carrying the skis and so I am glad to clip them onto my boots.  I’ve also forgotten that skiing means having five foot planks stuck to your feet.  I don’t feel at all confident. The evening before my companion had asked me if I could ski and I had said yes, and we chatted about where we had skied and told the usual anecdotes about the successes and failures of various runs we had thrown ourselves down.  I wished now the term ‘double-black diamond’ had not been uttered.  Pushing myself along on the flat I approach the gates, fumbling for my electronic pass and find I cannot stop and clatter into one of the posts.  I smile weakly at my friend.  I don’t feel happy or secure on the chairlift and regret now not doing my boots up tighter.  As we slowly glide upwards I am too nervous to take in the beauty of the countryside around us and appreciate the way the snow sparkles in the sun, which has finally emerged from the clouds.  As we approach the top, the retaining bar slowly raises and wriggling to the edge of my seat I get ready to push myself off.  The chair slows, I am slow to move, the others are faster and in the jostle I lose my balance and fall in a great clumsy heap to the ground.  My companion looks at me with a faint look of pity.  In a moment of clarity, I realize it is for herself, not me.

Because my boot clips are open and I am on a slope I can’t get up and so ensues an embarrassing,  human version of Bambi-on-ice.  I manage to get up at last and bend over to tighten my clips and to gather my composure.  In the meantime my companion checks out our route on the piste-map.  Over there, she points.  I nod and meekly follow in her tracks, glad I have hired a helmet.  It is one of those strange peculiarities of mountain weather that it can be a white-out one minute and glorious sunshine the next.  It can be snowing on one side of the mountain and clear on the other.  As we take our second chairlift, my ski legs slowly start to engage, the mist slowly lifts and when we reach the top the view is stunning.  Not one of those machismo Alpine views which is one huge craggy mountain in front of you and another one beyond it, and another one beyond that.  What surrounded us, here at the top of this mountain in northern Finnish, not far from the Arctic Circle, was a vast expanse of flatland that gently rolled away in all directions, generously scattered with lakes.  The sheer sense of nothing between oneself and, well, whatever was on the horizon felt strangely liberating.  “Let’s have a photo” I say.

My first run down is rubbish.  It’s a blue run which leads into a red.  My balance is poor; my weight distribution from ski to ski on the turns is sloppy.  I am nervous of any kind of speed.  My companion has streaked ahead of me and I see her at a bend, waiting, leaning on the poles she has stuck into the ground. I feel like deadweight.  Drumming up some confidence I push myself into a hard turn just before I reach her and feel the snow spray up in a satisfying arc around me.  “if you want to go on”, I say, “do”.  She shakes her head and smiles.  On the next bit I run through the exercises that are drummed into you time and again at ski school reminding myself.  “Lean into the slope, transfer weight to the down-hill ski, bend the knees, plant your poles”. By the end of the second run that sluggish gray matter that is my brain, is beginning to remember and my body is beginning to respond.  I hum the Blue Danube by Strauss, exactly like I used to in my first few years of skiing and start to feel some rhythm creep in and my body begins to relax.  This time, at the bottom of the slope, I am not far behind.  The village is just below us now and with its traditional Finnish architecture and twinkling Christmas lights I expect to see Santa wander across the square.  My concentration kicks back in as I see my friend take a sharp turn to the left.  I catch a glimpse of a number and a colour as I follow.  So……. we’re taking the black.  She is still down before me, but I take some little solace in the fact she is fifteen years younger.

Later, at the reindeer farm we visit, we are sitting in a large hut around an open fire eating reindeer sausages which are delicious. It feels slightly discourteous, though, given we have just finished being introduced to their mates.  They are an edgy lot these reindeer and might I say it, slightly difficult to predict.  You get the sense they might pretend to be domesticated when it suits, but really, they pretty much do what they want.  They are big beasts, with thick wiry pelts and antlers that are, well, deterring to say the least.  There are 250,000 reindeers in this region of Finland which is home to a lot fewer people – only 15,000 in fact.  The reindeers roam, but they are not wild, each one of them has a small pattern clipped into its ear to show who owns it. They all run together over the winter and then the farmers work together to find them and bring each of their herds in for breeding and slaughter.  As I sit there, chewing contentedly in the darkness, lit only by the flicker of the flames, I run my hands across the reindeer pelt I am sitting on. I had been thinking about what souvenir to take back from Finland, and now I know.

Finland Wilderness Training, Day 4, part 2 - me or the ice wall?

I find if I swear sufficiently profanely somehow it provides me with enough strength to lodge my ice-axe into the ice wall sufficiently far enough to drag myself another few inches towards the top.  I have been on the wall so long that all the blood has drained from my arms and I find myself relying more and more on the belay line.  Below me my buddy calls up in encouragement.  As the going gets harder and my swearing gets worse, the instructor laughs even more.  “You’ll make a real ice-climber yet he says”.  The crampons which I eventually got to clip onto my boots but only after some help are supposed to give me the purchase in the ice to allow me to stride up the wall using the strength in my legs and relying on the ice-axe only as a balancing tool.  It doesn’t quite work that way.  Daylight has gone and the scratches on the plastic safety visor of my helmet refract the artificial light which shines above me and makes it even more difficult.  The ice-wall is about 30 feet high; I am about two thirds of the way up and am exhausted.  My hands have gotten so cold that I can’t grip the ice-axe properly and no matter how hard I kick I can’t get the spikes on the crampons to stay in the ice.  I lose my grip and find myself falling, luckily feeling the belay respond and the rope tighten to stop me.  I signal that I want to come down.  As I slowly walk backwards down the wall I wonder how on earth I will manage the three hundred foot Lhotse face ice wall on Everest.   It’s a sobering thought.  

I belay my buddy for nearly an hour, she too is struggling but I really want her to succeed and get to the top, as much for my own motivation as hers.  She wants to come down but I won’t let her.  I shout at her to keep going, giving her as much support as I can on the line without actually pulling her up physically myself.  I have already decided to have another go and her success will bring out the bloody-minded stubbornness that I know I will need the next time around.  She briefly rests, and then in a final push hits the wooden ridge at the top. When she gets down her face is lit up with triumph and I hope I will get to feel like that too.  Swopping the harness and checking the clips I survey the wall and chose my route up.  “Right, you bastard thing, you’re mine” I think.  Swinging my axe I embed it into the face of the wall so hard once I get up to it I struggle to get it out.  Pulling back my foot I hammer it into the ice in a suitable spot and taking the weight on the spikes lever myself up.  I realize this is all about a state of mind. It’s me or the wall and this time I do not doubt that I am going to win.   Working my way up I pound into the ice which flies in every direction and I move so quickly the belay line keeps going slack.  I get to the top in 20 minutes and wrapping my arm around one of the wooden posts I hang there, catching my breath.  Looking down I get a big thumbs up from the instructor and a broad smile.  I feel crazily happy and hang in the moment trying to commit the feeling to memory and to secure it for a little bit longer.   When I get down the instructor shakes my hand and congratulates me for persevering. I take off my harness and go and quietly sit, in contemplation about the small differences which can mean success or failure.

Later as I walk to the sauna I feel the soreness beginning in my shoulders and legs.  At dinner I, like everyone else who got to the top of the wall, get a commerative t-shirt.  I will take it with me, to Everest.

Find the ice-climbing photos on the gallery.

Finland Wilderness Training - Day 4, part 1 - it seems like a dream

I open my eyes but the sense of a bad dream is still lingering in my head and for a moment I am not sure where I am. I feel damp from sweating under the weight of the layers I piled on top of me the night before and I push the bedclothes back, glad of the draught of cool air that drifts over me.  Laying there for a moment I try to shake off the sadness I suddenly feel and focus instead on the day ahead.  Its 09:45, I’ve slept for eleven hours and the muster for cross-country skiing is in 15 minutes so I shrug into yesterday’s clothes, push my hair under a hat and pulling on my boots head for the refectory.  It’s cold and grey outside, a bit like my mood.  Breakfast is being cleared as I arrive so I push some cheese and ham between two slices of bread, neck a glass of milk and then tack myself onto the end of the group that is off to pick up skis.  Out on the frozen lake it feels desolate and remote.  It’s difficult to distinguish between the colour of the snow on the horizon and the sky. 

I struggle with the binding on my skis and instead sit down in the snow because it’s just too much effort and then get up again and finish the job.  Our small group head into the middle of the lake. It’s easy following tracks which have already been made but when we head into untrodden snow the going becomes harder and slower.  Talking slows and stops and instead I hear the sound of my own heavy breathing and that of those around me. Except for the sound of our breathing, it is eerily quiet.  There is a hamlet of houses lined up along the side of the lake and the wooden steeple of a small church rises up from among them. The houses are painted in muted yellows and reds and the slight haziness of their form in the flat light and gentle mist adds to the sense of being in a dream.  Sound is muffled, the ground and sky look much the same and there is no sense that anybody else is alive except our small bunch strung out across the ice.   Having completed the circuit and warm now, we transfer from ice to land and head into the long line of pine trees which follow the frozen water’s edge.  It’s more interesting here, the ground is undulating and going uphill takes some concentration and the necessity of coordinating a set of six foot skis into herringbone format.  Our instructor who is Swedish, six foot two and having skied since a child makes it look like child’s play, strangely enough.  Even the smallest slope for me seems difficult in cross country ski bindings which allow your heel to lift and provide no apparent means for maintaining balance and coordination.  Our instructor skis down the slope backward and we applaud having learned just how difficult that must be.  On my forth attempt down the slope I manage to stay upright and slowly my body adapts to the new skills my brain is calling for.  My mood lightens and I begin to laugh.

Finland Wilderness Training, New Year's Day, part 2 - furry friends and off-road in the snow

My team is made up of five dogs each tied, via its harness, to a central line which runs back to the sled.  They make up a two, one, two formation with the brightest ones at the front and the grunts at the back.    A bit like a rugby team really.  The dogs are tied to the central line with blue plastic string in what looks like an incredibly complicated system but I come to realize how ingenious it. The aim when maneuvering the sled is to keep the lines to the dogs taut so that they can feel the weight they are pulling and this keeps the sled at a nice, controlled distance behind them.  Allow the line to slack and catch up with dogs and the sled can overtake them.  This isn’t good for the dogs whom can end up in a tangled heap being pulled sideways or backwards and not good for the driver who losing control of the sled usually ends up hugging a tree.  Injuries follow.  The way the dogs are tied looks complicated but in fact allows the dogs to rotate in their harnesses or to hop over the top of the string when they have to.  Which, as I get to grips with the correct level of braking is fairly often. Never have I seen dogs running at speed on three legs. 

Running the sled and distributing my weight correctly as we take the corners doesn’t take too long to master.  On steep downward slopes the dogs run faster and there’s a decision to be made between pressing the brake and instead letting the dogs have their heads and feeling adrenaline streak around your system.  On upward slopes you get off and push.  But now, we are rushing out of the trees and are suddenly in the open, the snow lies deep on each side of the narrow track and the dogs, warm already, snatch mouthfuls of snow as they run. With the line of the route running out into the distance there’s time to relax a bit and just enjoy the ride.

The wind is bitingly cold on the narrow line of exposed skin between my scarf and my hat and my feet are chilled despite the two pairs of socks and insulated boots.  My eyes narrow as my vision is obscured by tiny ice crystals which slam into my face as I am propelled forward into gathering darkness.  Behind the hill to my left the sun is beginning to set and throws an orange glow across the sky.   All I can hear is the music-like rush of the runners across the snow and the sound of the dog’s feet as they run.  I feel entirely at home.

We make a long steady curve at the halfway point and head back.  It’s dark enough now to need a head-torch and there is a precarious moment when I lift one hand to find the switch and the dogs, nearing a corner, decide to take the most direct route.  I find myself and the sled in two and a half feet of virgin snow.  The dogs stop, the sleds stops and both the sled and I begin to gently tip.  But I’ve not lost control of my sled and team yet and I don’t intend to start now so I transfer all my weight to the left runner and stick my right foot in the deep snow and, I know it isn’t cool, but I yell “mush” to the dogs .  They surge forward, we rock and pitch, I manage to regain my balance and then we break through the lip and are back onto the track. The dogs don’t slow down to check the state of their driver, they are on the homeward stretch and the pace has picked up again. And as we streak off I look back and see the destruction I have wrought.  The dog team behind me does the very same thing.   

It is the third and last run of the day for these dogs who will have belted around the track a total of sixty kilometers.  We see lights in the distance through the trees and hit camp but the guide doesn’t stop which confuses me slightly.  The smell of something heating on the fire tantalizes my olfactory senses as I whip by the tent which is almost close enough to touch.  Out on a frozen lake just beyond the trees we make a wide loop and for the first time I see the convoy in full and then a moment later we are back in the clearing, stood hard on the brakes waiting for someone to rope up the sled.  Forced to stop, the dogs jump and pitch for a moment and then settle quietly down in the snow.  I expect at heart, glad of a rest.  Inside the teepee I am still buzzing from the experience and my hands are  shaking as I take the cup of gluwein.  The drink is warm and scented with spices and holding it carefully I sink onto the comfort of the bench, wrap myself in reindeer skins and think about the last few hours.  I know I want to do this again. 

See the husky driving photos on the gallery.