Insert title here...

I have a few minutes spare so thought I'd write a little about my professional examination a few weeks ago. The pics in this post are not from the actual examination, but when we went to visit the site a few months earlier and I was messing around with my camera. Theres not many, but they're a little random.

Four of us had a group of customers for an overnight stay at Kortesalo house in Seitseminen national park the whole time we were watched by two examiners.
The customers had a day of activities planned out by us including all meals.
In the morning the customers were picked up from Tampere and dropped off at Kortesalo House, we greeted them with Glögi (a warm berry like drink served with sliced almonds and raisins), gave an introduction to Seitseminen national park and got straight into a few team building activities. Fire lighting, tree identification, orienteering and hunting.

We miscalculated how long the games would take and ended up finishing about an hour and a half earlier than scheduled so had to come up with some extra activities to fill the time trying not to look like idiots in front of the examiners. After lunch was the big snowshoeing guiding and nature knowledge. Each of us took a section of the nine kilometre route to lead and give short talks on various subjects along the way. I chose to go first even though I had never been on that part of the route so didn't know exactly where I was going or what there might be to talk about on the way.

I lead the group from Kortesalo paying special attention to my speed because I usually get my stride on and leave most people behind struggling to keep up. One of the customers looked like she was going to pass out so I took it nice and slow. Later on in the day she did collapse three times before getting picked up by the minibus, not my fault and nothing to do with me mind! she had her own problems. As we snowshoed I was hoping to spot some animal tracks or something clever to talk about so of course there were no animal tracks or anything I thought was suitable to tell the group. I stopped a few times along the way to explain a little about snowshoeing through the forest, told some interesting information about pine tree's and eventually found some squirrel tracks in the snow.
At the end of my route was Kovero farm. I gave a talk about the history of the farm and its current state before handing the guiding over to Irina.

When we got back to Kortesalo the sauna was ready so the customers got to relax while dinner was getting prepared.The examiners didn't hang around for too long, but left happy enough. We were all hoping that after sauna and eating that the customers would just go to sleep, but we weren't so lucky. Instead they wanted to go for a night hike. No-one else seemed keen on taking them so I said I would, I took them for a 3km walk around multiharju, a protected area inside the national park. The big old trees look a little different under torch light and and we heard a few strange noises coming from the depths of the forest. The customers were loving it.

At the end of the week I met with the examiners to hear their report on how the day went as a whole and also about my personal guiding and nature knowledge.
No joke, I don't think I have ever heard so many nice things said about me. I don't need to go into it, but I passed with flying colours. Bring on the next test!

Right now I'm working at Upitrek. This week I have been working with a school group from the UK taking them skiing, snowshoeing and doing multiple activities. Next week I'm taking a group of dutch customers for a week long ski trip along the Russian border before I get to go home to see my beautiful fiance.

Laters

gone skiing

Not really a post, but an update.

I'm on the minibus driving to Hossa hiking area in the Kainu region for the winter ski trip. Gonna be there for a week then I go straight to my work training pt2 at Upitrek for a few weeks which handily enough is in the same area.

I'm. Writing this on my phone for the first time so don't know how its gonna look?

Last week was one of our professional examinations for guiding customers that I passed with flying colours of course. Also passed the tree,berry,mushroom,polypore,lichen test from the previous week and the fish identification test if I haven't mentioned already.

Don't know how to add photos from my phone yet and I need to save my battery so...

Laters

Building a shelter

Carrying on from the outdoor classroom pic in the last post. We set out to build a shelter out of natural materials found in the forest. I would have liked to have built my own, but we ended up building a 3-4 man shelter as a group and it took about five hours. Not as quick as it seems when Bear Grylls makes em.so not any good for an emergency.

Yeah so this was our model built by our teacher. It took slightly less than five hours to build. It was very nice for ants, but in order to sleep three or four people ours had to be at least three times as big.

After selecting a good site for the shelter, we began collecting the materials and we needed a lot of material! Which is where I put my new axe to work.

My photos are a bit dodgy cos my camera really doesn't like the cold weather. If I'm lucky I have enough time to take one picture before it shuts down. My Nokia copes with the cold a lot better, of course. I'm using that as my main camera right now, but then I have the problem of the phone battery not lasting for more than a day so I need to figure something out for my ski trip in a weeks time.

 All the supports in place and interlocking, nothing was tied on apart from the cross beam and that was just to hold it in place at the beginning.

Your probably wondering, wheres all the fucking snow? Good question, but I don't know and nor do the weather men. That's why we are now heading up north to do our ski trip, otherwise it would only have been a few hours away from here.

We used mainly pine for the main supports only because there was lots around and then birch and rowan for weaving in between cos they're nice and flexible. With the last few spruce branches going on for the roof its almost ready.

Finished. everyone happy apart from grumpy guts with his axe at the front. Hopefully the forestry guys wont smash it up when they're felling trees. There is a lake only twenty metres or so in front of the shelter so we can spend a few nights here in the spring and do some ice fishing.

Ta-da for now.

Laters

Few and far between

Nice picture there of Tuesdays classroom, more about that in the next post. It was a bit nippy tho, not sure what the temperature was, but it hasn't been much warmer than -20 for the last few weeks. Still not much snow about, but the weather man said its gonna start coming down proper next week.

Its been busy recently so I've had no time to write these posts. The old dears been moaning at I so I'm gonna put a bit of time aside to get them going again.

Since being back in Kuru after the holidays there has been a lot of classroom business so not too many pictures to show. Lots of trip planning for my professional examination in the spring and started on my business plan, but it's a long way off yet. There was a fish identification test today. I'm pretty confident that I passed, I'll be surprised if I got more than one wrong.

I stayed at the school last weekend and practised a little handy crafts. I whittled a little butter knife out of a piece of Grey Alder. It's a soft wood so very easy to work with and a butter knife is about as simple shape as you can carve so not too difficult.

 Then I found another small block of Grey Alder so started playing around carving a spoon. Sketched it first, then went to it first with an axe for the rough shape then my knife. Oh yeah I have a new toy.

My Hultafors army axe. 15€ brand new from the army surplus shop, proper bargain. Got a few marks on him now cos I let a few trees have some the other day.

 Anyway back to the spoon. I got it down to this shape and thought it was a little chunky, there was a small knot in the handle so it could've gone a bit wrong, but I split it in half with my knife and luckily it went straight through.

I carved the spoon with my hook knife. I don't know if its called a hook knife? but that's what I call it. Finished it off with a little sanding and that's that. Not bad.

Some other things I was messing around with. That fork is the other half of the spoon I split in half.

I also spent a night outside last week to test my new sleeping bag.It was about -20 give or take. No tent or anything, just on a sleeping mat on the floor. Absolutely fine, only wore my long johns and I was totally warm all night. Face got a little cold, but I have a balaclava to where next time. I want it to get a little colder to give it a proper test before our ski trip in a few weeks. We've been told to expect temps of -35 so I need to make sure my kit is up to it.

 I got a some pics of me from when I was on my work placement in Lapland. Thanks to the photographers we took around for a week. Snowmobiling and swimming.

I'm not that keen on having my picture taken normally so I wasn't overly comfortable with having my picture taken naked either.

That's all for now folks. Laters

Still alive

I've been off the radar for a while working, yes it was work! in Lapland for a few weeks. Now I'm back and getting ready to go back to school next week. Here's a little of what I've been up to.

With a lovely hangover on the first of December, I left on a lush 12 hour train ride from Turku to Rovaniemi. Followed by 2 bus journey's to get to Äkäslompolo, in total taking 18 hours 45 min's.

I got to Snow Fun Safaris in the afternoon and wasn’t sure if I was going to get put straight to work or not? luckily the boss took one look at me and said that maybe I should go rest a little then come to work in the morning. I got taken to my accommodation, dropped my bags and went out for a few beers before going to sauna and crashing out.

My temporary home and new house mates

 My first day I got an intro to the company and met a few of the guides, then got straight into some snowmobile training and went out for a ride. I spent the first two day's visiting various places preparing them for the up-coming Christmas season, including Father Christmas's cabin!

Messing around on a frozen swamp, Ylläs fell in the background. One night me and a few lads took snowmobiles after work and rode up to the top. It was steep and I got stuck at one point and lost the others. The top was not nice, 30m/s wind and in seconds visibility was down to zero and I had to find my way down. Eventually I met up with the others on the other side of the fell and we went for a beer in Ylläsjärvi before riding back over the fell it to Äkäslompolo.

From day three onwards I was on the snowmobile safaris with the customers. The basic safari was out to the Kota (a hut with a fire place), where we would stop and prepare coffee, juice, sausages and buns for everyone. Then through the forest dodging reindeer back to the starting point, Taking two to two and a half hours depending how fast they wanted to go.

He was just popping down the shop, last year a reindeer walked into the local supermarket and had a little look around.

The safari size varied from only a few machines to a gert 50 snowmobile safari! The kids would usually ride in a big sleigh and if it was a cold day even though they had all the clothes on and were covered in blankets and reindeer skins by the time they got to the Kota they would all be screaming and crying and I'd have to carry them in to the fire place.

Before starting the safaris everyone got a safety briefing about the snowmobiles and were told a few times to go easy on the accelerator cos they go fast! Apparently not everyone took notice cos there were a few crashes and a few more out of control snowmobiles I had to rescue. Mostly from the restart after a break at the Kota.

This lady crashed into the toilet at the Kota from a standing start less than five metres away and hit it so hard she cracked her safety helmet. you can see she still had her thumb on the accelerator after she hit the toilet cos the tracks have dug into the snow. After some first aid I took her back to town with my snowmobile, half of her face had turned black and looked like she had two heads by the time we got there. Me and another guide came back after to tow the machine to the office.

About eighty percent of the time I was doing different snowmobile safaris. For the rest of the time I did a few different activities. A couple of times me and a few others had to look after groups of British holiday makers for the day while they visited Father Christmas and got attacked by an old Saami witch. My job was to organise snowshoeing/sledging, cook sausages and keep coffee on the go. Oh and we had to do this dressed as elves, I did get a few comments like "arnt you a little big to be an elf?" and "are there many west country elves in the Arctic circle then?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was -39 this day, most people stayed inside so we were on our own outside eating the sausages and drinking coffee to stay warm.

Here are pictures of the main man checking his naughty list.

We also did snowmobile trips to a husky farm, reindeer farm and ice fishing. The dogs were friendly, but crazy. Only quiet when they were running.

Before the run

After

We got a few fish ice fishing, but they were tiny. Then we went to check the nets set the night before.

We also took people to visit the Snow village/Ice hotel. Don't think I'll ever spend the night there,It was a bit pricey and a tad cold. Every year its different, this year it was carved by Russian and Chinese artists.

Health and safety at it again. Don't think this will see much action the place is made out of bloody snow!

Chapel

Ice bar

Only a little creepy

I took part in only a few snowshoeing safaris, one was a snowshoeing northern lights seeing safari. We didn't see the lights on the safari, but as soon as the customers had gone the lights came out and they were pretty decent. I saw the lights a few times while I was there, sometimes they were moving pretty quick and others it was just a green line in the sky. The other few times I went snowshoeing we climbed different fells with the customers.

For a short round up that's about it. I had concerns before I went about dealing with customers, what I would talk to them about and how to deal with difficult holiday makers, but it all went really well. I had a great time at Snow Fun Safaris, really nice people and if I get to work there again I will, and the next time I might be getting paid for it. Looking forward to my next training place in eight weeks time.

Laters.