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Kirovsk, Russia / Yllas, Finland 3/2007
Our latter trip of the season was to Kirovsk, a mining town in northern Russia. Oh and they have pretty nice mountains as well over there. The car ride was torturingly long, but somewhat worth it; the views were great and the slopes steep enough. The first few days of the trip the weather was foggy and windy, but it got clear and sunny soon enough. After some 4 days there had been no signs of reasonable amounts of fresh snow, and the forecast was that none would arrive soon enough. Damn! The hardpacked stuff just wont cut it, so we resorted to some heavy emergency snow-scouting over the (hugely expensive) gprs data connection from my mobile, and found out that Yllas and the rest of the western Lappland had (and was about to) received a huge dump the last few days. So we packed in a hurry and drove over -- and boy was it worth it! Also check out Toni's pictures here. - Matti
| Packing the "fridge" on the way to Kuopio, where we'd spend a night |
| Kuopio by night |
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| Yep yep |
| !! |
| Minibar of our limousine |
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| Pizza-stopover at Salla, at the border |
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| Hello, Russia |
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| Mari (rawwr), our guide Sasha's girlfriend from Jyvaskyla |
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| Vodkabowling |
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| Weather startning to clear on the 2nd ski day |
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| Soviet design apartments |
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| Doing vodkasports one night on the lawn of the hotel |
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| ??? |
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| Vodka-Andrei, from St. Petersburg |
| Vodka-???, bartender. Rawwr! |
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| The girl who served breakfast every morning. Rawwrr |
| Toni + Andrei mixing it up at 3 am |
| Ferrari |
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| Hello, sun! Time to kick the hangover and do some skiing |
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| Some 30min hike to the top. Worth it for the view. |
| View over Kirovsk. |
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| Almost looks like snow eh |
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| Heading for Yllas |
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| In the Bond store. |
| Nuclear lake |
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| Marking territory in Kittila |
| Oh looksie, its snowing at Yllas. Wohoo! And theres a LOT of it already. |
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| Sauteed reindeer, The Making Of |
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| Sasha the Mr Vodka |
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| While Heikki + Isto climbed Kesanki, me+samu did a little skitrekking over Keskisen Laki. |
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| The wind was so strong you could ski up the hill |
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| Forest powdaaah |
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