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Winter 2005
So, we have spent one year again, and another follows immediately. If one could do something for the time, it would be adding it for us since it begins to be quite hurry, again. I feel like I cannot focus all the things I would like to with enough precision. Some help has been given by long, simple walks, after those things seem to go to their places. It is like fixing computer hard drive. During the darkest hours of the year I usually take some time for myself. Reading is one of my favorite hobbies and this year I received really good books. Two of those books were sent by Mr. Matti Tervaskanto. Both of the books are descriptions about Matti's and his 'Group 76' adventures at arctic places. Another one is a story of their pre-North-Pole preparation expedition to magnetic North Pole 1981 and the other one an interesting description of their glacier expedition to Eidsvollfjellet of Svalbard. I felt quite prejudice to be able to read these rare books.
One thing I have been worried about during my trips is medicine and first aid. Even though all of us have taken part to first aid courses, I still feel we don't have enough knowledge about these things. Fortunately, at the meeting of Finnish Arctic Club I met Mr. Heikki Karinen, doctor, who has studied a lot of what is happening in human body when spending time at high altitudes. He has written a good book about the basic things one can do if injured at places where hospitals are not around the corner. He has some background for these things since he is a member of Finnish team to Mt. Everest next spring. He is also responsible of deciding the medicine for the Finnish North Pole team 2006. The book is written in Finnish, but for more information contact Heikki by email, heikki.karinen@nic.fi . Our expedition is going to start at Easter Friday, 24.03.2005. At that evening we are hopefully 100 km away from Longyearbyen, brought there by snowmobiles. Last week I took full-color-copies about our expedition map to all of our team members with Seppo. I also made some measurements from the map. The total length will be something like 457,5 km, with total altitude difference of 3700 meters. We will have also 50-60 GPS points that will guide our way. During this month we will publish this map, so you readers can figure out where we are going to go. During the expedition our location can be followed from this map. All our camps will be marked by red point in the map. OK, I will go to ski now. See you! P.M. Nature has shown its forces again, and shown also that people are just so small in front of it. First there was this huge human tragedy in Asia and during the past weekend our tiny Baltic sea showed its force too. The sea level has raised more than one meter in some cities. Fortunately this time the damages are mainly economical. Last morning when I was running in my neighbouring area I saw that water has risen to people's cellars and garages. Like I mentioned before when nature shows its' forces there is not too much matter of physical forces of human. Only experience, intelligence or luck may help you. Unfortunately they are not always enough, like we have seen. I just heard of two friends who had reserved their vacation to Khao Lak in Thailand, one of the worst damage areas. They had luck not starting their trip at Christmas but planned the trip to be later. We will also need some luck that we won't meet too severe storms or hungry polar bears. These events in nature has raised a huge respect for people who live in nature, like Eskimos or Indians, who are able to "read the nature". It begins to feel that modern human in his apartment box has lost his contact to nature in many ways. For some of the people spending night in a tent is the worst they know, while the truth usually is that spending time outdoors is the best for your body both mentally and physically. V.L. Winter. It just won't start. Our near-by lake here at Tampere (lake called Näsijärvi) had little ice on it a few days ago, but that's not enough if we are going to keep our preparation camp there at 20th of February. I just hate this kind of a winter. Next weekend we are going to the national park of 'Helvetinjärvi' (translated as Hell-lake). We will train ice-climbing and moving as a team at glacier (using crampons and stuff related). Sami Nytorp (in the picture) will be our coach, since he has very strong background in climbing, especially ice-climbing. Hope there is ice we can climb. At Sunday, when returning home, we will have shooting camp at Nokia (it's a town near Tampere, not this famous finnish firm, so it will still exist after our camp!). Last week there was two documents about A.E Nordenskiöld and his life and adventures in artic areas (famous Finnish explorer at 19th century) in national television channel. If I and Petri Vuorenmaa were moving in his footsteps while crossing Greenland by skis 2003, this time we will go straight to his base camp. He traveled to Svalbard many times, but late summer 1872 he had 3 ships to manage. Their goal was to reach group of islands, which are located north from Northeast passage and if possible continue to North Pole. After several incidents they failed and they had to establish a winter camp to Mosselbukta, at mouth of Wijdefjorden. From document I noticed that there still exist some ruins of the buildings Nordenskiold and his team built, and the scenery surrounding them were amazing. Especially, because I know that we will ski past them after few months. It usually gives very little snow there, so we might be able to find the ruins. Also we might have a chance to meet reindeers that escaped from the expedition crew. They can be separated from the local reindeer by the fact that they have longer legs. The heat is rising, only two months to go P.M. Last week we had more good news, while Exel decided to join our group of supporters. Together with their experts we chose Exel T5 to be our ski poles. It's made of carbon and for that reason ski pole is really strong and light. Exel Montana or Nova we have used previously feel now quite heavy compared to this newcomer. It feels quite strange while thinking how long there has been ski poles, that they can still evolve quite dramatically, so we want to thank Exel for long-lasting work in product development for this new achievement. Our Mcmurdo Plb emergency-satellite-sender has aroused interest lately. Last spring I heard rumors that Finnish telecommunications authorities would have liked to hear more about the movements of our Plb, especially during our Greenland 2003 expedition. Finally I called them myself. They had heard that device is going to be used by "some expedition group top Svalbard", and the way this device is registered didn't please them at all. After a few phone-calls and emails I started to realize what it was all about. We
had bought this Plb from England, and they were the only authorities that required it to be registered.
Now it was told to us that the registration has to be made here in Finland, too. If we would have
forced to use this device in Greenland, then the alarm would have gone only to authorities in England.
Now it will be understood in Finland, too.
There is still one problem: nobody has previously registered Plb in Finland, so they are missing all the necessary papers for this kind of registration. I think there will be a slight hurry with this anyway and in addition to that the device is currently in hands of the engineers of the company who imports McMurdo products. Next week will tell a lot with this issue. Last weekend it was time for action. We went to Helvetinjärvi national park and our intention was to test and train our new climbing products, and get to know each other even better. It was quite late Friday when we arrived to the cottage and our main task was to warm up the building and the sauna. After a few problems we managed to do that and went to sleep Early in the morning I and Sami went to build the first training session to near-by ice-wall. We wanted to exercise climbing out of crevasses at circumstances that would fit reality us much as possible. Last autumn we trained it last time. I think everyone of us agreed that it is much more difficult to do this in icy conditions. Afternoon we trained moving in a rope at a glacier. Distance from one another will be something like 15 meters
when moving at glacier zone. Also our sledges will be also tightened to the rope. We will not use the rope
all the time during expedition, but the need for it will be evaluated at place. At the end of the day
we exercised rescuing people out of avalanche. We have few 2,4 meter rescuing sticks in case avalanche occurs.
Sepe made us so heavy meal that we were forced to sleep a few hours. The darkness has arrived and I went with Sami back to the icefall where we trained ice-climbing with axes and crampons. It felt very strange and lonely to climb in the darkness when one couldn't see too much either up or to the ground. Sunday was the shooting day. We need to be able to shoot if polar-bears start to think
that we taste better than the food it usually eats. Sami had arranged us a place where we could shoot safely.
At this point Jami Kangasoja, our contact person during the expedition, has joined us too. Everyone shoot
8 to 10 bullets to get a hint about our weapon. The best shooter was Olli-ekka, who got 30 points out of 40
with four bullets. Everybody was able to hit the target which was our intention. To stop the ice-bear one doesn't need
to hit the 'bulls-eye'. After that we went home. Next training camp will after a month at Näsijärvi-lake, where we are going
to have our 'mini-expedition' for three days. Before that there will still be a few things to consider... P.M. At last I got it. I mean flue. Good old flue, how long I have been waiting for you? First it began with heavy sore throat. Then came powerless feeling with running nose. With all the money. How could anyone hope to have a flue? My argument is that I want to have flue now, not while living in a tent at Svalbard. Last weekend, at our preparation camp I felt quite tired all the time. Only thing I was willing to do was the 'compulsory' trainings we have agreed beforehand. Nothing extra. It is not guaranteed, but I hope I will have only one flue this winter. The firm that maintains our home site offers all kinds of interesting statistics about the pages and their usage. For example, they give information about the amount of page loads per day and from what countries are the users from. These statistics include sometimes funny information: one of the list is about what are the words used at search engines like 'Google' to find our pages. One of the words was "nude-pictures". What on earth? Even if I wanted, I didn't find the word "nude-pictures" from our pages. And if I saw right last weekend, no one of us is in a condition where he should pose in the pictures without his clothes on. Maybe after the expedition. We hope that after everyone of us, especially I (104 kg) could be weighted with baby scale. The winter came to Helsinki. At Friday, after my flue I had a lot of energy and rushed to the sea-ice with my skis. Before entering the ice, I took some speed from the steep shore and ... BANG! There was a lot of water between the snow that has rained and the ice-cover of sea. And there was I with a lot of water in my mouth. I have to say that I didn't get thirsty, which was the best part of that exercise. After that swimming session I was able to ski a bit and the whole weekend. There was enough wind to remember what we will experience after a month and a half. V.L. And grass is growing at my backyard again. Last week we were at the forests of Tampere and measured the thickness of ice there. Even at small lakes there were only 10 cm of ice, and this was the maximum. Saturday there were plus degrees Celsius and according to weather forecasts it will be the same whole week. I wonder how preparation expedition will be, if it's not going to be very cold, very soon. I have followed the weather in Adventdalen, which is located 4 kilometers from Longyearbyen center. The weather changes rapidly all the time. Very often it goes from minus 25 degrees Celsius to plus degrees. This tells us that it won't always be easy to ski, with new snow and temperature near zero, but we have an innovation for this: slippery tape. Put it to the bottom of skis and you'll fly again. An another significant thing are strong winds. It seems to be normally 5-8 m/s and every now and then 20 m/s. Ice situation at Wijdefjorden (see our map!) is the one to follow, too. We are supposed to ski along it when we arrive from the north. It rises some worries now, because there are hardly no carrying ice at all. Our finnish contact at Svalbard, Priitta Pöyhtäri, told me that some winters Wijdefjorden has ice only to the half way up. If this scenario happens, we have to ski up-hill also at our return march. I read again the book of Peter Freuchen: My childhood at Greenland. It tells something about how Eskimos used to live (and how they mostly live today, too). The life was only about food and proper clothing, nothing more, nothing less. One of the specialities of the culture was it's harshness. For example, if the hunter disappeared during his trips, his wife sometimes "removed the weakest member of the family" just to make sure that the strongest members would survive. Also hustlers and other anti-social people could be killed by the common decision of the village. How long could I take the life of that kind, I don't know, but I think we will have a clue during the expedition. Not after one or two weeks. But at some point we will feel it, I'm quite sure about that. P.M. 14.02.2005 OK, Let's start by telling that next weekend we will have our little training expedition at Lake Näsi and we will try everything related to that, like updates of diary using satellite phone, which will be the case at Svalbard. So next weekend we try to add story every day. Stay tuned! Next I will focus on another things. During the weekend I started to feel that there is no skiing culture in our capital. Enthusiastic skiers do exist and good ski tracks too, that's not what I mean. There are even skiers with fast pace. But people don't respect skiers. The thing is, that I would rather ski on snow than on dog shit. Or on broken ski tracks. I beg all you dog owners and people exercising Nordic walk: please don't let your dog make his thing on the track and if you can, don't walk on the tracks. There are only two months every year that one could ski hear at Helsinki. Thanks in advance! Only five weeks to go and preparations are going faster and faster. Today I implemented two washing gloves by the instructions from Timo Polari. Actually it was my mom who implemented, I was on the design section of this product. I bought enough canvas, designed for outdoors towel material. Then we draw two glows on it, cut the pieces and tied them with sewing machine. Then rubber band at the place of wrists that they would stay in place when one washes him. The washing is implemented by pouring water into a plastic bag where you dip the glove. After that you go through your body with that glove. I will try this during the weekend. Reports will follow. V.L. 18.2.2005 So, here we are on the road. Yesterday we gathered again and got the new Goretex clothes made by Sasta. There were also fleece jacket, hat and gloves. Now it's pure fun to go forward. At 21 we were at the shore of lake Näsi, ready to ski our first tough day, 100 meters. After that we built the tents and drinked a few punches, because everybody agreed we earned that. Our morning began with interviews by media people. There where people from newspapers and from radio too. We will also give radio interviews from the expedition. After interviews it was time to take some photos. For a very little moment we felt like we were celebrities, but that feeling disappeared quite soon when the real work started. Our guests enjoyed their stay with us so long that we started the trainings
at midday. At first our going was a bit hassle. I had troubles with my
bindings and O-P took off his shoes during every brake. Anyways, we were
able to make some 22,5 kilometers today with five legs (one leg means 50
minute skiing and 10 minutes brake). We were able to see some very superior
shapes of ice made by nature. Just before darkness we were ready to built
our tents again. V.L. 19.02.2005 There was not too much to praise about our morning, because our camp was full of water. Only tiny 20 cm away from the tent was full swimming lesson. This was all was caused by the hole I did yesterday to the lake ice that we could have some water for food and drinking. During the night the pressure of ice lifted the water over the ice and the rest is just history. We decided together, that this was the morning we could sleep as long as we wanted, so we started our day at noon. First leg was the normal 50 minutes and we covered 4 kilometers. During the brake Sepe noticed he had dropped 'something little' and had to go back few kilometers. This something little was our climbing rope Today we tried our charching system as well as travelling tied to that rope Sepe fetched previously. I thought it would be more difficult it really was. The charging system will need some tuning but the weather was not optimal since it was cloudy today. We ended our skiing to the sunset. The ice situation seems to be good
besides all the warnings. Ice quite thick here in lake Näsi, at minimum it
has been about 20 cm thich. It seems that we won't get wet during the last
day. The only question mark is that what will the hole in ice made by Sepe
do to our camp. P.M. 20.02.2005 Our day started at 2 am, when Sepe and O-P kept noise outside and talked something non-understandable about morning coffee and skiing at night. I woke up and thought that polar bear has attacked us, but soon I realized that maybe polar bear does not like the surroundings of lake Näsi. I fell asleep again, and woke up very shortly to enormous bang from the other tent and to shouting: "Couldn't you do that while we were outside?". Boys are boys. We didn't start the night skiing but woke up at eight o'clock. After normal morning hassle we started the first leg with walking with crampons. It was better to train the pulling the sledge like here than at Svalbard and minus 20 degrees Celsius. That was enough for everybody and we changed to skis and after 10 kilometers we were safetely back on the shore again. A few cups of coffee and everybody headed back home. I had a "pleasant" journey at full-packed train from Tampere to Helsinki. I really felt sorry for the
older women who sat next to me, since the smell surrounding me was not very pleasant. My previous shower
was a few days ago and even though I used the washing system I mentioned before I couldn't be too much sure
my deodorant has lasted the journey. The system was good, and I will use it at Svalbard. It's like a taste
of civilization, where we have to return eventually... V.L. There are some suspicious actions coming up. Namely, Vesa has announced publicly, that he will wash him during the expedition? I and the rest of the group are going to stay far away from the soap. Nothing is better than a body that has not been washed for a month. Will my darling agree? Last weekend at lake Näsi gave a lot of belief to our group. At Sunday I noticed that we skied like real expedition group. There was not too much talking or excuses. We just skied, everyone with his own pace. Start of the week was not good for me, I mean mentally. My thoughts were at the weekends trip and motivation for work was not at its' top. I still made something little for the expedition. Our emergency equipment still lies at store of company named Funuro. They are waiting for some program that enables the registration of our device to our name, which was that Finnish telecommunications bureau has requested from last spring. It seems that we will not be registered before the start, so I will ask Funuro to send the device for me. It will work, but it's not fully legal in Finland. Our medicine project is almost done. I visited Doctor Heikki Karinen and went through the list. There will not be too much equipment to heal severe accidents; they will be handled by helicopters or sledge ride. The interior of the package will be in our equipment page, which will be published soon, hopefully this week. Those pages will also be updated a few times after that. It seems that every one of us will have about 100 kg of stuff with him, and I will definitely feel like something when we go up NordenSkjoldbreen. We got a new equipment sponsor. There will be one Panasonic Thoughbook CF-18 laptop with us. With the help of this highly shielded computer we will announce our message from the glacier. Also Finnish outdoors net-shop ulkoilukauppa.com has link at our site. Check it out, their range of products is getting bigger all the time. Some complaining to the end. I finally got the stomach flu. It came a bit late for me and of course at the time when we have nice sunshiny weather. And the fever is just rising... P.M. Spring 2005
Hello again! Last weekend of February I spent by participating to long distance skiing event from Utti to Pajulahti (75 km one-way, which I had participated many times before). This event is a tribute to Finnish partisans during the war 1939-1945. My aim was to ski back-and-forth this route (150 km, "normal distance") and I had two friends for the both stages (75 km, "express distance"), Risto and Jyrki. Shortest possible distance, 30 km, is named as "sprint" The different distances are named by the inventor of the event, Jorma Laukkanen, who has his own kind of humor in these things. Or do you really think that 75 km is an "express distance"? So, we started skiing with Risto at Friday 19.15 o'clock. Beginning was easy as always, and I built high pictures about my fore coming heroic deeds. I had told Risto that "I know this route as my own pockets!", so we wouldn't have to read map too much. I had got to known with this dictum a few years before in the boat at the sea are of Pori, where the host of our shooting duck group gave these words from his mouth at the darkening September night, when we tried to find the island where our cottage was. We eventually found the cottage but not as soon as our host claimed.
After five hours of skiing we where almost at the half way of the trip, at the skiing cottage of Anhava (place where one could by coffee and snacks, located near popular ski-tracks. Quite common in Finland), where we arrived by skiing the last 7 km from the town called Kuusankoski. We were ahead of the time-schedule I had made in my mind and the feeling was good. I already saw day dreams of the extended resting time at Pajulahti before Jyrki would arrive and we have to begin our journey back to Utti. At this point Risto asked me how much time it would take to our next food-stop, a big service area located at the road near skiing route (this skiing event doesn't go all the time at ready made skiing tracks, but from time to time one needs to ski in the middle of the forest and fields, too. There are tracks made by ski-mobiles, though). But it's not that easy. After we left the skiing cottage I had this irritating feeling that I have not skied this route before. Landmarks seemed to be OK, but they didn't quite match the picture I was expecting to see. I thought that this all was caused by darkness. After we had skied 45 minutes we came to the crossroads of the ski tracks where there was a bigger map of available. Risto was far ahead of me going when I shouted to him: "Risto, could you wait, there is one little thing here...". "What, he shouted, are almost there?". "Well, you see... We are now two kilometers away from Kuusankoski, we have skied to wrong direction 5.5 km. We have to go back to that ski cottage". We had skied another ski-track that goes back to Kuusankoski. At 01.30 it felt like a punch to a stomach. A total collapse at mental side. I almost cried, it felt that bad. But what could you do, we started our silent skiing back to the cottage. 11 km of navigation mistake is not what one wants to experience at that point. When we got back we had to seek the correct track for a while in the darkness. We arrived to the service are 2 hours behind my "schedule". To Pajulahti we arrived at 9.00 o'clock next morning. Sun started to shine and after breakfast and shower the feeling raised enormously. We went to rest for a few hours before Jyrki arrived and requested me to start to ski again. I had not slept a second since my body had gone into overdrive caused by exertion. I felt very envious when Risto packed his skies and stuff to Jyrki's car and drove to Utti. I had to pack myself and my skis on the ice of Pajulahti and started to ski to the same place at 13:30 o'clock. On our way back we didn't do any mistakes anymore and we were backat Utti 11:14 from the start. Still this return was all pain. My muscles where aching and at Utti I was mentally finished. If I have had to decide at that point, then there would not have been any expeditions ever. But after a few days I continued my preparations again.
V.L. Only 7,5 days (about 180 hours) to start. Then begins this year's only Finnish arctic expedition. My Toyota Hiace, five sledges, five skis, Vesa and I. We will drive through quiet hours of night to Oulu, and at morning there will be a bit arctic in the air. At Muonio we will stop and eat some pizza, since it's so arctic food! Overnight stay at place called Peera and to Tromso we will drive. Wednesday morning Sepe, Sami and O-P will start their engines at Tampere and follow our trails, with less weight on their vehicle. At Tromso airport we try put our equipment to cargo if possible (food for locals is first-priority, of course). If not, it will cost some more. 12.15 flight departs to Longyearbyen and at that point we hope to meet Jami, our web-master, who has flown to Tromssa. Rest of the expedition will fly on Thursday. Reason for travelling like this that Easter is coming on and Easter everything is closed. Before that we need to meet authorities and buy white gas. Also sledge drive needs to be arranged. I, Vesa and Jami will fix this. Other guys will be there after arrangements. Then there is only one thing to do: Sami has his birthdays, and we will have 'a little' parties for him, to be fresh at Good Friday morning when the sledge drive will take us to the wild nature. Our Plb emergency transmitter came back from Funuro uncoded. Things are anyway OK with that, so there is no more head-ache with it. We also got our Toughbook CF-18 computer, and we installed all the needed programs to it with Jami. After a few moments the first mail sent from that machine saw its' daylight. Appearance of this device is respectable, it looks like it was born for 'tough usage'. And it weights only 2 kilos. Saturday morning we visited grocery store with Sami. 100 kilos of food found its' way to our carriages. We went to pack to my place. It was quite slow and we only were able to pack 13 kilos of cacao and 13 kilos of porridge. Fortunately Sami will deal with the rest. We counted that food for one man per day costs approximately 8,3 euros. It's not too much compared to the fact that there is twice the energy for normal conditions There are still a lot to do. Vesa will write a story on next Sunday. After that our story comes from the North latitudes. P.M This is our last update from home. Next update will come when we are on the way to Tromso, Wednesday or Thursda, depending on our interpreter. Our updates will find their form during the first week. So be patient.
Usually before longer trips I have a bit depressing feeling, but now there is no sing of it. I just want to get on the way, to close mobile phone and start to cure of my media-bloat. We have trained and thought this expedition one year and a half so it is really time for some action. Eating has been the most fun thing lately. Now one does not care too much about extra energy in food. One example of my diet this week. After wake-up, I ate 200 grams nougat. Then 100 grams of bacon and three eggs. For dessert, 200 grams of chocolate. And this energy-filled day continued with chosen route all the way. I hope that there will not be any cancellations, otherwise current seal-form of my body will not get any better. V.L.
© 2004-2005 Svalbard 2005 retki |
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