Green corridors - a city's link to the surrounding nature

As the current trend of urbanization leads into a situation where the moving flow concentrates on bigger cities, the pressure of building on new sites becomes inevitable. Some cities were originally designed so that natural corridors were left for splitting the city into different sections by leaving e.g. long forested corridors in between. These so called "green corridors" are offering a possibility to be used for recreational purposes by the citizens. One example of these cities is the capital of Finland, Helsinki, where a few green corridors have existed, but they've been diminished due to construction of new buildings in the latest decades. These green corridors are formed by natural-like forests even-though there are some small man-made roads for recreational purposes like jogging, cross-country skiing etc. Nowadays, there are only two larger and uniform corridors left, or at least what I concern significant. Well, there is a third one as well (the easternmost) that doesn't really form a corridor but it's still a major area, even-though it was recently influenced by the new harbour area of Vuosaari. (highlighted on the following map)

[The map was created by using publicly available data produced by  National Land Survey of Finland.]

For a winter sports person, the green corridors offer great possibilities for cross-country skiing and snowshoeing. The Central Park forms a long link of cross-country skiing tracks through out up to it's northernmost part, where the most popular skiing facilities are located. Snowshoeing can be done almost everywhere, or at least when there's enough snow for relevant use of snowshoes.

On a nice sunny day, it's awesome to utilize the opportunity to head outside into a green corridor from your doorstep. I did a short cruise using snowshoes, as I've been cross-country skiing in Lapland for six days during last week. The use of a HR-belt indicated that snowshoeing is a pretty good way for doing a recovery exercise, if you don't perform any significant spurts. At the same time, I was further testing my new Devold Multisport baselayer merino shirt that I found from a bargain basket at a Lappish sport shop. I'll have to admit that it's pretty awesome what comes to its performance compared to synthetic materials. Previously, I've sometimes used another merino shirt, which is more like a base/midlayer shirt, and it has been so awesome that I really wanted to give a go for another one for baselayer usage.

Finally, it's important to remember that Helsinki is a small capital compared to the big cities around the world. All in all, I would still claim that it would be important to implement this kind of infrastructural design to keep people in contact with nature, as urbanization is leading people away from it that scares me the most.  There are built parks in many cities but natural-like habitats could be considered more important.

Some more cross-country skiing and snowshoeing in Lapland

On Tuesday, it was bit cloudy, but otherwise the weather was pretty good for cross-country skiing. I used a different kind of kick wax, which performed better, and skiing went quite well. I skied some 12-15 kilometers, which included a nice break at a wooden lean-to shelter.

On Wednesday, the weather was bit too warm for skiing, so we decided to check another snowshoeing route, which is located on the other side of the main fell, Ylläs. This route goes up to a smaller 'pre-summit' called Pikkulaki. The length of this route is 6,6 km, but as we started from a nearby car park, the total length was ca. 7-8 km. As the temperature was rising during the day, it went finally up to +6C. So snowshoeing wasn't that easy choice either, as snow got quite wet and heavy.

On Thursday, I decided to head for a bit more uphill oriented skiing trip, as I skied a route, which goes up to a nearby fell called Kukastunturi (474m). The total length of the route was about 12 kilometers, of which the first half was more or less bit steeper uphill.


On Friday, I did a bit more easy-going route, which was a bit over 15 kilometers long. And tomorrow, it's time to head back south and get oriented for spring.

Kuertunturi snowshoeing route

As the weather was not that good for cross-country skiing today, we decided to go and have a look, what the surroundings have to offer for some snowshoeing. It has been snowing for the whole day, so the visibility wouldn't be that good, but we still decided to head up to a nearby fell, Kuertunturi.

There's actually an official snowshoeing route up to Kuertunturi, but we started heading towards the major flow of snowshoe marks and we ended up taking a different route to the top of the fell. To be honest, it was a pretty good choice to take another route, cause the official route happened to be a 2-meter wide compacted path, even-though the map of snowshoeing and skiing tracks indicated that snowshoes are a must for this route. The official route is 3,0 kilometers in one way, so 6,0 kilometers in total, but I'd guess that the length of our route was about the same.

Snowy Tuesday

After a few days of above zero degrees and wet snow, a snowfall hit during the early morning on Tuesday. I tried to figure out something to do, but it would have been shitty to cross-country ski, so I took my snowshoes out of their bag. Then, I went to nearby woods for a quick and fun session, which included some "climbing with snowshoes" and few "locked heels" drops into fresh and untouched snow. Well, for the "climbing" part I had to choose another route, cause the first one was too icy. Finally, the one I climbed had some old and well packed snow, which "bent" into nice juggy hand holds after a bit of fisting.

The first line, which was bit too icy...

And by the way, I just realized that my blog is going to have its first anniversary on 13th February. Quite a bunch of things has happened during the first year and luckily the statistics show that some people have found/read this blog (a few times in a day, on average)