Skiing in Levi

May 10, 2023August 13, 2024 / Maria / Leave a comment

The last segment of our trip was to another small town in Lapland called Levi. It’s only about an hour from Yllas, so we drove there after our visit to the snow hotel. While I didn’t care to sleep in a snow hotel, I was keen to try out one of the glass huts. There are several different glass huts around the region and as the name suggests, they are basically glass roofed hotel rooms. Unsurprisingly, they are not cheap, so I shopped around a bit before deciding on the Northern Lights Huts in Levi, which are pretty new and the cheapest I could find in the region.

It was a great choice! It’s located on a reindeer farm about 20 minutes away from Levi town. There’s 10 glass huts on the property and we had one booked for 2 nights. The huts are very new and really nice on the inside, so it was nice to relax for a little bit after a busy day of dogsledding. We returned to town for supper, but otherwise had a chill evening.

My primary motivation in booking the hut was as a last ditch attempt to make it easy to see the northern lights. Fortunately, we’d already seen them 4 nights in a row by then, so it removed a lot of the pressure. The geomagnetic storm was winding down and the KP was back around 2-3 for our last two nights, so I wasn’t sure if we would see them. On the first night it was pretty cloudy and we didn’t see anything before bed. The app said the clouds would clear around midnight, so I set an alarm and we woke up at midnight and could see them from our bed! So it ended up working out nicely because I definitely would not have trudged down to the lake in Akaslompolo at midnight, but it was nice to wake up and watch them inside for a bit and then go back to sleep.

On our last full day in Lapland we had planned a second skiing day. Levi resort is bigger than Yllas and fortunately the wind storm had moved on and the entire resort was open! While Yllas only had two faces to access the mountain, Levi had at least 4. There are two main lifts, one from Levi town and one from the south face, which is where we opted to start. Levi was busier than Yllas, so it took a while to get our rentals, but after that there was a lot of terrain to choose from.

I recall there being at least 3 chair lifts and 1 gondola, but pretty much all the other lifts were T-bars and there must have been at least a dozen of them! The mountain is completely bare on top, so you can pretty much ski down it in any direction. Each T-bar only services about 2-3 runs, so we slowly made our way around the mountain. The terrain was simple enough that we could ski any run on the mountain, so we just explored as much as we could. It’s a very different experience than skiing in Canada, but I enjoyed it more than Yllas.

We had lunch at a small restaurant on the east side of the mountain, but my favourite skiing terrain was on the west side. While the temperatures had been between -10 to -20 degrees celsius when we arrived in Rovaniemi, it had warmed up a lot over the week and it was around 0 degrees when we skied Levi. It felt much warmer and it even starting to feel a bit like Spring. There was no fresh powder on either mountain that we skied, but because it’s generally cold and dry in Lapland, neither mountain was icy.

We discovered a pancake restaurant in Levi that I was excited to try for dinner on our last night. So we enjoyed some giant savoury pancakes before retiring to our hut for the evening. The KP was only 2 on the last night, so I wasn’t expecting much even though it was clear, but the aurora treated us a real show! I guess because we’re so far north, you can still get a very active sky, even with a low KP.

At first the lights seemed pretty normal and similar to other nights, but around 9 or 10pm they got incredibly active and despite having the glass roof, I couldn’t resist going outside to photograph them. The lights were pulsing from horizon to horizon and we couldn’t catch the full scope of them from inside. It was probably the second best night we’d seen them and it was a real treat to witness them swirling across the sky one last time. Seth had kind of gotten over the allure by that point, but the northern lights captivated me every single night I saw them. I admit I got a little obsessed and since I returned home, I’ve been plotting when I can see them again.

The aurora goes through cycles throughout the night, but they also go through larger cycles throughout time. We’re currently heading into a period of increased geomagnetic activity for the next few years, so it should be easier to see them over the next 5 years, so if there’s ever been a time to plan an aurora trip, this is it!

Our last day in Finland was pretty boring. We enjoyed our buffet breakfast at the hotel and then drove two hours back to Rovaniemi to catch our flight. One thing we learned is that the Finns all have a secret sweet tooth and eat a lot of candy and chocolate. Finnish chocolate is really creamy and delicious, so we stopped by the grocery store on the way back to stock up. We had an uneventful flight back to Helsinki and returned to Katie’s apartment for our last night.

Katie took us to a ramen restaurant for our last meal and we spent an hour walking around the city before returning to her place for one last sauna session. She’s scheduled to finish her degree before the end of the year, but she’s also planning to stay in Helsinki and look for work, so who knows, we might be back again in the future.

Finland is probably not the first place that comes to mind when you’re planning a holiday, much less a winter holiday, but I really loved it. The aurora certainly made it memorable, but even without the aurora, it’s a cool place and I liked a lot of their progressive policies. I would definitely come back in the winter to chase the aurora again – I’m not sure I’d visit Lapland in the summer, but I’d consider returning to Helsinki in the summer and maybe tack on a visit to Norway or Sweden to do some hiking. Overall we had a great trip and would definitely recommend!

Dog Sledding and Other Adventures

May 3, 2023August 13, 2024 / Maria / Leave a comment

On our second day in Yllas we made another attempt at the ski hill. This time we drove around to the Yllas side since there are more chair lifts. It was still windy, so we were disappointed that the top half of the mountain remained closed, but we decided to go skiing anyways. It was mid-week, so fortunately it wasn’t too busy – we had to wait in line at most lifts, but given that half the mountain was closed, it could have been a lot worse.

Skiing in Finland is a very different experience from skiing in Canada. It’s not a very large mountain and it’s incredibly bare and exposed, so the skiing is not as adventurous. If you like groomed runs, it’s a decent mountain, but there’s almost no ungroomed terrain, so it can be a bit boring. The mountain is deceiving because it looks like there is un-skied powder between each exposed run, but because of the climate, the snow off-piste is very crunchy and bumpy – not fun for skiing.

But the biggest difference is the lifts. Yllas had one high speed chair lift going half way up the mountain and one (closed) gondola going to the top. Besides that, it’s almost entirely T-bars. We also skied a second resort in Levi and it was the same. None of the terrain is very steep and because the mountain is so bare, you can ski down any face, so I guess it’s a lot cheaper to install a ton of T-bars, with each one only servicing a couple runs. It wasn’t that big a deal, but it does make for a tiring day when you don’t get to sit on the chairs because then you are constantly on your feet.

So it wasn’t my favourite mountain to ski, but it was definitely an experience! We skied all over the mountain in the morning, then after lunch we managed to find one glade run on the far side of the hill, which ended up being our favourite, so we skied that one a few times. There’s a lookout on the way back to Akaslompolo and we timed our departure to catch the sunset from the viewpoint. We didn’t see that many sunsets in Lapland, but the ones we did see were very beautiful. The sky turns purple and pink and reflects off the snow.

On our last day in Yllas we opted to do a dog sledding tour. I was really on the fence about it because they’re not cheap and you can do them in Canada. But I went to Banff last winter and opted not to do one, so I figured now was the time and booked a half day tour with Rami’s Huskies.

Rami’s is located just outside the National Park and we arrived to the predictable symphony of screeching huskies. We didn’t really know what to expect, but we were excited to learn we would sledding in pairs of two, which meant we would get to drive our own sleds! We got a quick lesson in the basics: hand signals, stopping, how to take turns, and when to slow down; and then we prepared for our 16km run in the National Park, with a lunch break at the half way point. The sled is just big enough for one person to sit in it and one person to stand at the back. The person on the back is the driver, so we decided Seth would steer first while I took photos from the sled.

There was about 10 of us on the tour, plus two guides. Each team had 6 dogs, so there was a whopping 42 dogs in our party! When you’re dog sledding in the wilderness, you direct the dogs verbally on where to go, but we were following a track the entire time, so the dogs pretty much just follow each other and the track, so it’s easy to drive. You just need to use the brake whenever the person ahead of you signals because you don’t want to run into the team in front of you.

It’s a bit of a slow start at first because the dogs are extremely excited to run and there’s a very sharp turn early on that the guides want everyone to take slowly. We had a few stop and starts, which are challenging because the dogs were very restless, but eventually we got into the groove and no one fell off their sled the entire trip, which is a bit of a rarity. Seth had his work cut out for him when we kept stopping because the team behind us had a very excitable lead dog named Ginny, and she would get too close to Seth whenever we’d stop and nip at his butt to try and get him to keep going. Our team was a bit slow, so eventually the guides swapped Ginny into our team and we went a lot faster after that!

We had so much fun on this trip! I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but we were thrilled to drive the sleds ourselves and what left the biggest impression on me was how much the dogs love to run. They are loud when you arrive because they are already hooked up to the sleds and they can’t wait to get going. Around the 8km mark we stopped for a break and the dogs mostly settled down for a rest, but as soon as we started getting ready to go again, they were up and eager to keep running.

We had what I can only call a boil-up for lunch, which is popular in Newfoundland (the similarities continue). We got a little fire going to make tea and the guides roasted sausages for us to snack on with some biscuits. We had the chance to question them on the dogs and learned a lot about the sledding industry. At Rami’s, the dogs will run about 32km a day, 5 days a week, at their peak age and health. They’ll either do two 16km rides (like ours), or a 16km ride in the morning, followed by a 10km ride in the afternoon, and a 5km ride in the evening. They regularly swap out which dogs are in which teams, but the dogs all have distinct personalities and some won’t run together, while others will only run with certain dogs, and some will only run as lead dogs.

It takes about 2 years for dogs to mature, so they don’t work full time before then and are mostly in sled dog training. Once they get older, they reduce the number of kilometres they run per week, but they never fully retire the dogs for their mental health. Huskies are an eccentric breed and I can see how it would drive the dog nuts to not run at all after a lifetime of it. Rami’s doesn’t do dog sledding races, only tourism, and they have about 75 dogs in their kennel, which is considered small. Some kennels have up to 450 dogs!

So if you ever find yourself in Lapland, or even anywhere in Canada that offers dogsledding, I would highly recommend it! We really loved it and I wouldn’t hesitate to go again – now I just need to do some research on where I can go in BC!

Rami’s is close to the Lapland Hotels Snow Village, so after we finished our tour we decided to drop by the hotel. It’s a hotel compound made entirely of snow, so it gets re-constructed every year. I think the layout remains the same year after year, but the village is filled with tons of snow sculptures and those change every year depending on the theme. It seems like their most popular year was when they did a game of thrones theme, but when we visited they had an around the world theme and had sculptures of iconic monuments from around the world.

The village comprises of a snow restaurant, a normal restaurant, an ice bar, and a hotel. During the day the hotel has a cover charge to view, so it operates primarily as more of a gallery. There’s about a dozen different themes rooms with varying numbers of beds. Since no one stays there during the day, we were a little bit confused about how it worked because the village is open to visitors from 10am to 10pm. But if you’d like to stay in one of the snow rooms, they are available purely for sleeping starting at 10pm. So basically you check in, sleep in the room, and get hurried out in the morning, so it wouldn’t be my choice, but to each their own! We enjoying viewing the sculptures and then hit the road for our next stop in Levi!

Aurora Hunting in Akaslompolo

April 19, 2023August 13, 2024 / Maria / Leave a comment

After Rovaniemi, it was a pretty leisurely drive to our next stop, Yllas. I’m not sure if it’s just because most of the roads in Lapland were covered in a hard layer of snow, but they were in amazingly good shape. With our studded tires, it made for easy driving, though there wasn’t a lot to look again except flat forest and meadows. The trees were still covered with a thick layer of frost, so they were very beautiful.

There was a reasonable amount of traffic on the road on the main highway, but eventually we branched off the main highway on a shortcut and that road was pretty much deserted. It was still light out and the driving was fine, but it did make me a little nervous to be driving through the freezing cold wilderness without a working cell phone. Nothing happened and it was all fine, but my safety conscious mind tends to wander to these things sometimes.

We arrived in Yllas just as the sun was going down. When we originally booked the trip, I assumed there were mountains in Lapland because of the numerous ski resorts, but overall Lapland is quite flat and Yllas Mountain was one of the only major landmarks in the area. It’s definitely on the small side for someone who regularly skis Whistler, but it is located adjacent to Pallas-Yllastunturi National Park, which has beautiful rolling white hills. Yllas town is pretty much just resort hotels, so we were staying 15 minutes away in the small town of Akaslompolo. This was mostly because it was cheaper than Yllas town, but now that I’ve been to both, I would recommend it because it has more amenities.

We were also staying in a cabin here, but it was part of what I can only describe as a large hotel resort. The hotel had a reception building and a giant restaurant to accommodate the many visitors they receive. There were all kinds of accommodation options and we had a small one-bedroom cabin for our 3 nights there. It was a classic log cabin and was very cozy with both a woodstove and a sauna. The one glaring flaw was that it didn’t have wifi. It was supposed to, but it wasn’t working at the cabins the whole time we stayed there, which was very frustrating for us since we were planning our activities on the go, but we survived.

What made up for the lack of wifi was the restaurant and the location. They treated us to a free buffet supper at the restaurant and we stuffed ourselves on traditional salmon soup, elk stew, and all the fixings you can possibly imagine. But the highlight was the proximity to Akaslompolo Lake, which was recommended as a great place to watch for the aurora and was only a 10-minute walk from our cabin.

Since the previous night, the low KP forecast for the week had done a complete 180 degree transformation and was now forecasting 4-6 for the next three days! Unfortunately, it was looking a little cloudier, so I kept an eye on the app for when the clouds would move out. I think we went down to the lake around 8pm and we had to wait around for a while, but eventually we started catching a glimpse of the aurora through the clouds. It was pretty similar to the previous night and was dancing around, though it was still pretty faint. We watched for a while and then the clouds moved back in and we went back to the cabin to enjoy our sauna.

We were exhausted after the sauna and were getting ready for bed when I got enough of a wifi signal for my app to send me a notification that the aurora was heating up. I popped outside for a minute and could indeed see it dancing around up in the sky, so despite it being 11:30pm and being super tired, I couldn’t resist suiting up again to go outside and look at it. I just walked up the road a little bit at first, but it was much more intense than everything I’d seen thus far, so I immediately got super excited about it! I decided to fully commit and went back to the cabin to tell Seth I was going back to the lake. For safety reasons, I made him set his alarm for 1am and told him if I wasn’t back by then, to come looking for me.

I all but ran to the lake and was panting from the freezing air when I got there, but it was so worth it! The aurora was much more active and visible to the naked eye. Nothing too crazy, but easily the best I’d seen. I set up my tripod and was shooting north for a while when I noticed a pinkish glow coming from the other side of the lake. A few photographs confirmed that I was lucky enough to witness red aurora! Red aurora is supposedly pretty rare, so I was ecstatic about it. I’ve since learned that colour is an indicator of the altitude of the aurora, with red aurora being the furthest outside the atmosphere and blue being the closest, so both of these colours are harder to see. Green and purple hang out somewhere in the middle. We saw purple aurora the following night, but otherwise we mostly saw green.

It was hard to tear myself away from the lake, but I had to get back to the cabin by 1am and my camera battery kept freezing on me (a very annoying problem as I had to keep removing it from the camera to warm it up with my body heat). It took me a while to walk back though because the aurora kept distracting me on the way and I’d have to set the tripod up again. Like I explained in my last post, the aurora goes through cycles and so it will seem incredibly active for a while and then seem to disappear before returning in full force. Eventually I made it back to the cabin with 5 minutes to spare!