Laajis Thunder

Warning: this is a skier-geek post, but it has everything to do with skiing in Finland, so if that's in your wheelhouse, read on.

In one of my first posts I expressed my excitement to ski on all these trails around here. Well, I’ve been skiing for three weeks now, but of all those kilometers of trail, I’ve skied on about a .5 km of them—out and back for 1km per lap. Remember those saw dust piles? Yup. It’s last year’s snow under that sawdust. That’s what I’ve been skiing on.

All the rain we’ve had since the first iteration of “Laajis Thunder”—the name I’ve given it in my head, derived from Canmore’s “Frozen Thunder” laid out annually in late October up in Alberta—it’s truly amazing that three-plus weeks in, I had the kind of ski I had today with the weather we've had. Pretty mealy, churned up crushed ice, but a portion of newly-laid snow with a bomber classic track and great kick. But even with the unprecedented natural snowfall this year in Duluth, we are hard pressed this time of year to ski classic in good tracks until Grand Avenue Nordic Center gets running or the base has really accumulated.

I've been skiing ALL classic so far. I'm nailing my kicks better, earlier, than anytime in recent memory as a result, even with my reticent right leg. And I'm loving it! More on that below, but above all, I want winter to show up.

The snow is tenacious to say the least. Lot’s of freeze/thaw cycles, some smatterings—and I mean smatterings—of new snow, and lots and lots of rain, still haven’t killed Laajis Thunder. Quite the opposite. The longer we get into what should be winter here without actually getting any--or at least much--the more defiant the Jyväskyläns seem to get about it. At least the Nordic skier people.

I had resigned myself to the 1 km gerbil wheel a while ago, but the dump trucks that started zipping hither and yawn early this week across the lake, under Matti Nykanen’s ski jump on the far side of the stadium, rendered an extra 200 meters out in the woods, extending the roundtrip of each lap to 1.4km, all of it in the woods on ski trail, which admittedly feels more like, well, skiing. I can see where they’re going with it too. A loop is discernable as piles of snow get dumped at intervals beyond today’s turnaround point.

Adding snow. A loop is coming, but when?

Priced out in man hours and equipment, what they're doing is expensive too. I considered whether to go with paying 10€ per day or 100€ for the Laajis Thunder season pass (skiing is apparently free (!!!) on natural snow). Having raised money for similar such efforts in Duluth, I can appreciate what the group of younger middle-aged enthusiasts I see every day at the construction trailer-turned ticket office/meeting space/coffee break spot/graffiti canvas, have gone through this winter. They've figured out how to bring skiing to the area when winter simply won’t.

Laajis Thunder HQ

I wanted in on the collective effort. I calculated I wouldn’t likely ski 10 times on that little loop before snow came, so I’d make my roughly 50€ donation and buy the season pass. Well, my pass has turned into a value in the end, and one that improves each week, apparently.

I think it was the first Monday in November when Mimmu told me Laajavuori had spread the stored snow. It was a damp, overcast day, because really, what else is there this time of year here? I dropped the kids off at school and drove up to Laajavuori to see what was up. The cars in the upper Nordic stadium lot told the story. A ribbon of grey-white snow was heavily populated with skiers of all ages skiing in the drizzle; young racers in the purple and pink get-ups of Ski Jyväskylä ski club—a suit I know well from Anita’s Instagram page. I recognized some adult domestic-elite guys with the orange and black suits from Jämsä’s club. But the majority were older folks—me-old and older. Lots of them were really good skiers mixed in with fitness enthusiasts who weren't the kind of good an American skier might think are prevalent in Finland. The atmosphere was first-day-of-skiing electric, or at least as electric as a broad swath of introverted Finns can generate. I bristled nonetheless.

I jumped back in Jazzi and headed towards Seppälä shopping area. Mimmu had alerted me to a second-hand sports store, but unlike Play-It-Again Sports with everything under the sun, it pretty much catered only to hockey, skiing, and golf.

When it came to skiing this winter, I had to take a serious look at what I needed—which was absolutely everything—from long underwear, to skis and poles, to gloves, to wax. Normally, a family of four has years to develop a quiver of sports gear—to chip away at the investment over time. When we arrived, we basically had clothes for a summer vacation with the possibility of fall-like weather. We arrived here, four active, sporty people with no sporting gear really to speak of.

A quick survey of shipping clothing and gear from Duluth nixes that idea right out of the gates. We’ve found Tori.fi has been great for used stuff in general, and between Mimmu’s friends, people we’ve met through Iita’s hockey team, and the fact that Taavi’s Salibandy is pretty sparse on equipment, we’ve managed pretty well to date. Considering we have duplicates now of just about everything we’d use here, back in Duluth, we knew we couldn’t afford to go retail on much if at all, as much as I love to support the ski industry. It just isn't practical for numerous reasons, not the least of which, we're not made of money. Plus, I’m not skiing at a level nor seriousness in which I need the very best stuff, even though I have just that sitting in my garage in Minnesota, minus my sweet skate boots, whose back story is in a recent post.

So, I had some decisions to make, and I made them all on the ten-minute drive between Laajavuori and the second hand sports store. Good skate boots—the kind I would enjoy skate skiing in—I would not want to invest in here with great new ones, back home. Those had been sent for. The spread snow was going to be rough on whatever I bought. It would be icy, sharp, dirty; not something you want to take a sweet new pair of skis onto, day in and day out. I’d noticed that “hiihto”—Nordic skiing in Finnish—really seems to mean classic skiing first, and yeah, skating is part of it too, but just kind of the new thing. If you look at all the places with ski equipment out for sale, I’d say easily 60% of not greater, is geared towards classic skiing. Skate skis for Laajis Thunder would be nice, but finding an affordable decent pair in the next half hour was going to be tough, and I didn't want crappy, soft, beat up skate skis. I needed to wait for my boots to come to Ruka anyway. Plus skate poles need to be longer, lighter, and stronger to be enjoyable too, and I’m used to the top of the line there. So, in the 10 minute drive, I decided, classic it was going to be.

The newest thing is really prevalent in the market place here—skins. Lots of classic race skis with skins on them for sale everywhere over here. For those who don't know what that means, it's basically a new tech development for the kick and glide classic style of skiing in the parallel tracks, in which a racing or high-performance classic ski has a glued piece of carpet under the foot. You need a big camber—or arch—under the foot to keep the carpet off the snow with your weight evenly distributed between the two skis so it’s not super slow on the glide phase. Then when you compress the ski by putting all your weight on the one kicking ski, the fabric grips the snow so you can kick forward. It requires a pretty high-quality ski construction. The skis aren’t any cheaper to produce than a good race ski, and arguably are MORE expensive with the kick zone being a cut out carpet, but they are almost universally still slower than a waxable classic racing ski. So, their not like buying a cheaper ski or anything. But they work, and they take the most frustrating piece out of the equation for the general public—kick waxing.

I think they are a great development for the ski industry to get the fitness folks who aren’t into the finer points of classic waxing, to come at it from maybe entering the sport due to the simplicity of skate skiing. No offense to anyone who loves skins, but they simply are not for me. They are slow compared to waxed classic skis. And they feel weird. I know how to wax. And they were going to set me back more than a decent pair of used classic skis. Plus, I’m in Finland. Finding a decent pair of classic skis was going to be pretty easy I thought. I turned out to be right on that one.

I was a partner in a ski/outdoors shop in Duluth that lasted 3 years in the mid 2000s. We were going to open as a demo center for a brand we owners had a great long term relationship with as racers, but after we’d already signed the loan papers, the rep of our area got pressure and then cold feet and the deal fell through. it was an omen, I think. We scrambled for a way to open that winter with some skis to sell. The Karhu ski importer to the United States had basically closed shop that spring and had a slew of ski gear in its warehouse we got for pennies on the dollar. We simply bought it all. And the thing about it was, the classic skis particularly were AWESOME!

I didn’t know at the time that I’d eventually coach the Karhu ("bear" in Finnish) ski manufacturer’s daughter in college a decade later, but he was a champion Finnish skier and skied on the brand his whole career before he took the reigns of production over when he quit racing. He's still doing it but now they're called Yoko. It didn’t hurt that he was one of the best classic skiers in the history of the sport either. Over the course of that winter, we bought a really great ski flexing bench to fit skis to people, and we found that the Karhu classic skis were REALLY consistently built—meaning the skis in a pair matched really well (you’d be surprised at how few across the market did, at least back then), and the flex patterns and pressure were really, really practical for most people who want a classic racing ski that works for them. We sold through our classic ski stock that winter, partially because they were a good deal, and partially because they skied so well, and word spread. I’ve never forgotten that winter of ski sales. Karhu to me has meant great classic skis ever since.

The best pair of classic skis I’ve ever owned are back in my garage in Duluth; a pair of two-year-old Madshus top-o-the-liners, in a 209 cm length. They ski like butter. I knew I wasn’t going to find something like that, nor was I trying to. I started sifting through the used classic skis at the second-hand store and spotted about a 8-10 year-old pair of neon orange and maroon Karhu Volcan classic skis that were 203 cm in length—not as long as I’d hoped, but they had a Vuokatti stone grind sticker on them—a sign some racer was willing to put some dough into their speed. Kick zones clearly marked. They were a cold weather, relatively soft ski, but I’m an out-of-shape guy too. Perfect for an old racer to be able to close that kick pocket on the steepest of climbs at a pedestrian velocity. I’d found my steed.

I got a couple klisters (really sticky grip wax for corn snow) in town I thought might work and went home to change, then ski. I was jazzed!

Because of my weight, I waxed short of the marked kick zones and I had almost nothing for kick, even though the skis were probably soft for me. I knew better too. I had to trust the skis. A good classic ski will have a kick zone. Period. We can get into micro nano feathering of kick zones to satisfy all the tweakers, but the long and short is, a good classic ski will have a kick zone that works. It’s just a matter of whether or not you can close the zone, and how thick you need to apply wax to stick and still glide. I went back to the car, waxed to the red marks, went back out, and BAM! I was in BUSINESS!

The tools for the job

As a biathlete most of my competitive career, I’ve owned very few good pairs of classic skis, so this felt good. At the second-hand store, I also got outfitted with about an 8 year old pair of new boots still in the box, a new pair of mid-range poles, and the Karhu’s with bindings, all for 177€. If you factor in the waxes, make it an even 200€. And I am having some awesome klister classic skiing right now. The Karhu’s for 69€ are probably tied as my second fave classic skis ever, only my long Madhus collecting dust in my Duluth garage being clearly better. I applied Rode multigrade Universal klister over a week and a half ago in Vuokatti, and aside from a few drops of Ski Go red I’ve mixed in for wetter days, I have been going strong day in and day out on that wax job, indicating the Karhus are keeping the zone off the snow while gliding and not wearing off much of the klister. They are also relatively quick. I regularly pass codgers on skate gear on the long downhill into the stadium. I haven't touched the glide zones. I’m so thoroughly happy every morning when I knock out my 5 laps after dropping the kids off at school.

Which leads us to the Finnishness of this whole thing. First, there aren’t a lot of places that would lay snow out like this with no big races on the calendar, and fewer who would add to it as real snow refuses to fall. Second, chances of finding a pair of classic skis in America in a second-hand shop that are as good as these Volcans, is almost a certain impossibility. But finally, what’s Finnish about this is how prepared Finns are for winter in the face of not having winter. I’m exercising winter without it.

When we arrived here, Mimmu and I watched a lot of YLE (Finnish national broadcaster) morning news. A few days into our new apartment, we fell in love with their young meteorologist. I couldn’t even understand her, but her energy, spunkiness, enthusiasm, and good nature flew out of the TV set in a manner that was very unFinnish in the best of ways. She's magnetic; an absolute breath of fresh air. I declared to Mimmu that I had a new favorite weatherwoman, and I couldn’t even understand her. We told her as much on Twitter, and the three of us kind of started a very loose Twittership. She seems voracious with the medium and responds to just about everything I tag her in.

I was beginning to think I needed to appeal to her for some answers as to why she hasn’t delivered us winter yet. Then this morning, I saw she posted a GIF on Twitter of the jet stream blowing straight up from Spain and the Mediterranean. Without any idea of the Finnish word soup in the post, she showed me what was up. Talent. We are simply getting a steady stream of warm air. Then, after that, I caught her on air showing impending snowfall over the next two days and “lumi” was mentioned. I cheered way up, thinking this weekend I might get out on a broader swath of trails. But the visions of snowy kilometers dancing in my head came crashing down moments later when out of her mouth came the word “sade”—rain. The slide for Sunday after all that forecasted snow, was plus temps and rain. I wanted to cry.

The kids and I got in the Jazzi after that. I dropped them off at school. I arrived at Laajis Thunder, a little under motivated, started skiing, still with great kick even though it was sugary in the stadium. I climbed up and out into the woods and got my heartrate and breathing going, thinking I’d crank to the top of the climb at the end of the snow spread, to get in my first “interval.” As I crested the hill where the trail ended yesterday, it kept going! A long ways, kind of. But 200 meters around the corner and downhill, felt like Magellan finding a new stretch of ocean. My planned 5 laps grew from a 5k ski to a 7k ski, and it felt great!

It wasn’t much, but suddenly, this un-winter felt just a little bit better. Still, I'm excited for hard kick wax and a white Christmas. For now, Laajis Thunder simply will have to continue to do.