The Åland Ice

I'll return to last week's ride to Åland on ice, since there seem to be so many misunderstandings about sea ice and riding on it with a reasonable degree of safety. When assessing ice, the history of the ice is of importance, and hence I will take a look at that.

Nordic Skating on the Gullkrona Bay

The Archipelago Sea is covered with ice. Here is a little video from yesterday's skating trip.

Nordic Skating is on

Finally the Nordic skating season has started for real, in conditions one can usually only dream about. The archipelago of southwestern Finland is getting ice, and the area of new ice without any snow is growing rapidly in the current cold temperatures.

Vigu Nordic Skating 2

Since taking the Vigu Nordic Skating 1 course a few years back, when I pretty much was a beginner, I've learned a lot. I feel pretty confident that I can read and assess the ice and skate safely in most situations, but when the ice gets thinner and weaker I've been careful. In practice this is the point when the ice pike goes through the ice, meaning that it is no longer fully safe. From that point on there is still some margin where it is possible to skate and this is what I hoped to get from the Vigu Nordic Skating 2 course, which finally took place last weekend.

Nordic skating and the lack of winter

The fall 2016 was actually quite nice. Dry weather until the end of October, then a short rainy period before the weather became colder. We even had snow the second week of November, but that soon disappeared after a week of raining. The weather continued to vary with temperatures both above and below freezing, with a November that was a lot less rainy and grey than usual.I have several friends who were quite impatient (ping Toni) and just waited for a real winter with snow. I would certainly also have welcomed lots of snow for fatbiking and skiing in November, but there is an advantage to having several arrows in you quiver. The lack of snow and temperatures still mostly below freezing made for the best Nordic skating on lakes for a long time.

The Nordic skating season is upon us

The weather took a turn for the better during Christmas and got colder. No snow, but the forest trails soon froze, making for excellent fatbiking. The continuing low temperatures combined with no snow also made way for something not often easily possible: skating on lakes and the sea, so called Nordic skating. During a cold winter the skating season continues further out on the sea, but the ice closer to land gets too much snow. The closest lake (a little over 1 km away), Littoistenjärvi, is a shallow lake which is one of the first to get ice and hence the first skating trip took place on December 30th, just two days before my kayaking season ended.

Vigu Nordic Skating 1

It was finally time for another Vigu (the Wilderness and Nature Guide eduction of Axxell) course, Nordic Skating 1. An attempt two weeks earlier was cancelled due to the lack of ice. This time the conditions were ideal, though. It had been very cold for almost two weeks and very little snow. The course was also moved to the Turku region, because of the better ice situation here, which suited me fine.