The winter that was not

Not much activity here on the blog lately. The most miserable winter for a long time is to blame, as well as some health issues (still not resolved) following the worst flu in my adult life.

The fall started out pretty wet, with the rains starting already in August. I was quite active with sea kayak guiding all through September as well as mountain biking for most of October, when the trails  still were not too wet.

In the beginning of November we actually had some promising cold weather.

Unfortunately the rain soon started again and the trails became too wet to ride on, except for some shorter sections. Incidentally, this is something that has caused some debate lately: It seems like finally some mountain bikers are realizing that riding on the wet trails causes too much damage. Others are still totally self centered and refuse to realize that they should alter their riding. The mountain biking etiquette still needs developing in Finland.

There still was a few single nice days, but mostly it rained almost constantly.

A few times we even had a little hope for a winter.

In January the hope soon faded, though. The long term weather forecasts were relentless. Some single days had a little snow and colder temperatures, but it never lasted long.

The weather did give me an opportunity to test my new packraft.

In February I decided to start the kayaking season again. If not for the weather, I would probably have gone on several kayaking overnighters already, but at the time of writing we've had storms with hard wind and lots of rain coming in for three weekends in a row now.

There has still been some single nice days, even though it has rained a lot.

In the beginning of February when the forecasts for the entire month became available the sporting goods stores started to panick and have since tried to get rid of all the winter gear. It is getting increasingly unlikely that we actually will get a winter in Southern Finland now (according to the most used definition the winter hasn't started yet). Though we've had poor winters before, this surely must be one of the worst, since it has rained so much. Unfortunately, this is the direction the winters are going right now with the climate change.