Notice anything odd about the trail - yes, it does go round in a circle at one point. I missed the turn off after the first rest point and ended up doing a nice tour of the Syote National Park (just like one of the managers had suggested we do at the previous evening's briefing). When I got back down to the bottom, found an RR sign and followed it, I ended up back at the first rest stop after a detour of 12km. Except now it was packed up, which meant that I was behind the safety snowmobile that follows behind the last skier. However, the rest stop is also a small cafe, so I decided the safest thing to do was to go inside and call the organiser and explain what had happened and where I was. At least I was at a known point. My phone has much better maps on it than my GPS, and even Nokia's maps, which show pretty much every track in Finland showed nothing for a radius of about 10km or more.
When in doubt, it always pays to do the lowest risk thing - in this case, staying where I could easily be found. After all, as competing cross country skiers, we are not usually wearing enough clothing to keep ourselves warm if we are not moving, not usually anything else much (a mobile phone, a bit of high energy food, a space blanket and a small wind up torch are my emergency kit).
What happened next shows just how well organised things are. A snowmobile was despatched to collect me, with a sledge for my skis. This cheerful Laplander turned up, and took me on to the next rest stop, where the second coach was held back and took me on to the next rest stop, where I was able to rejoin ahead of the safety sledge. This is how I ended up only skiing 67.2km instead of the planned 84km.
The sad thing is that I was actually fit enough to have completed it, but this is a remote part of the world and safety must always come first, and I would never want to risk the safety of other people just because of my mistake.
As for the skis, after the prepared waxing wore out, my own call on waxing seemed to work out, and I managed a very respectable progress.
Cross country skiers can never have enough waxes, and now I understand why.
In an earlier post, I mentioned the volunteers. Well, in some places, the entire family turns out to staff a rest station:
Tomorrow is actually the shortest day, and we already know that the ice is not strong enough to support the track preparation machinery. Today, I had no falls until the last few hundred metres. The last 2km are on a frozen lake; at one point there is an amber "road works" type light to draw attention to weak ice some 50-100 metres away. At other points you could see where water had flowed over the top of the ice and then frozen again. But also we had some fresh snow, and a snow pocket collapsed under my weight (I am probably the heaviest skier) and threw me off balance.
No comments:
Post a Comment