February 4th: The life is smiling with a couple of really good ski days behind us. Before that we had a week of pretty bad snow, rain on the mountain is not good for skiing. Now we finally had a good dump of snow, no idea about the official numbers, but definitely enough for some nice skiing. Not feeling the crust underneath and there would’ve been enough faceshots to share with my neighbors, no complaints. Life has been good otherwise also, I could move to this place. There’s some new snow in the forecast for tomorrow and the day over, but I think I’m going to concentrate on skiing and leave the camera at home. It’s such a heavy, big thing and the thought of falling on it does not appeal to me, so I find myself taking it a bit slower with the camera in my backpack. Next week should be warm so I’m probably going to visit the beach. Have to go and throw a stone into the Pacific Ocean while I’m in the hood. Here’s some photos from the last few days.

7th February. What a great day. Nearly a week of continuous snowfall and then today the sun finally came out. Yesterday we had maybe the deepest powder I’ve ever skied in my life, I managed to ski into a tree since I couldn’t see anything after getting my goggles covered by snow after a faceshot. I quickly swiped the goggles clean while skiing and the first thing I see is a tree in front of me. Nothing serious happened though and the skiing continued. One thing is clear now, Ville is tougher than a Japanese tree.

The snow had settled quite a bit during the last night and was great for skiing. Not the most perfect faceshot-blower-powder, but damn fun to ski. During the afternoon the clouds went away and we moved to the sunny side of the hill to hunt for this trip’s first sunny powder photos. We got couple good photos out of it, with Kalle getting the best photos of the day and me being on the other side of the lens for a change. A very nice day indeed. Tomorrow, if the weather allows we’ll go and check some of the bigger lines on Happo. There rain and high freezing levels forecasted for Tuesday but luckily we should have more snow on Wednesday. So no big catastrophe.

I should start by telling something about myself. I am Ville Eskonen, 26 year old young man, born and raised in the dark and melancholic East-Finland. The last 7 years I have held the fort in Rovaniemi, in Lappland, North-Finland. Skiing has drawn me since I was a young school kid. My skiing career began at Koli, a small ski area in East-Finland, where I spent as much time as I could. The money from each summers job I spent solely on a bus trip to Verbier. After high school and the mandatory Finnish army service I had to decide where to move to and Rovaniemi seemed like a good spot, close to the skiing in Northern Sweden and Norway, and a nice small ski hill next to the city.

After six and a half years I just finished my studies in Rovaniemi, a time period bit longer than expected since skiing took priority in the winter. During the last couple seasons I’ve gotten more and more interested in ski photography. At the moment my situation is that I quit my Rovaniemi job and left my rental apartment. Which in turn left me practically as a homeless, unemployed bum, ready to leave my tracks on untouched powder fields. Free your mind and your ass will follow, or how did it go..

Last winter I spent two months in Hakuba, Japan. The winter was the warmest one in 40 years and nearly each week from the end of January till the beginning of March brought one rainfall all the way to the elevation of 3000 metres. Still we got a lot of pristine powder turns each week, too. After the trip I worked through the facts myself and decided that I must experience the place again during a normal winter. And after this realization I bought plane tickets and booked accommodation for this winter. This time I will spend three months in Japan, and after that I’ll be doing some spring skiing in Northern Sweden and Norway, maybe a bit in Finland too. I will try to write and upload photos from these travels couple of times a week.

Burning legs and some damn good skiing (9th January)

Here we are, at the destination and couple days of skiing behind us. The trip was a lot of fun, a long flight  followed by 4 hours in 4 different trains. I can’t imagine anything more enjoyable, especially when you have three months worth of luggage, skis and other equipment to carry.  Yep, when we were finally there I was pretty fed up already. Oh well, some instant noodles to eat, couple hours of sleep and on to the skiing.

Good snow (skier: Kalle)

(skier: Kirstine)

The snowpack is unbelievably good compared to last year. Far up I’ve heard there’s 6 metres (19 feet) of snow at best. We haven’t done any skitouring yet since the runs from the lifts have been pretty damn good also. You have to be lazy enough not to go touring if you can get faceshots when skiing straight from the lifts.

Today we were skiing with Kirsti and couple other local friends. Before noon we had some really good treeskiing, and in the afternoon we got to drop one bigger line on the north face of Happo. A little less than thousand vertical meters (3000 feet) of good powder, no complaints. No photos from this line since there was no light in the shade and the wind was blowing hard enough that the camera stayed in the backpack. Here’s some photos from before noon though.

Sun and deep pow (skier: Kirstine)

Minigolf line (skier: Matt)

I’m a bit bummed that I spent the whole December working and didn’t get to ski that much. Now it’s gonna take me couple of weeks before my legs get used to this again.  At least at the moment my muscles don’t like the thought of tomorrow’s coming day of skiing. So the evening program will include some extreme stretching, stretching the unstretchable. Even the thought hurts. That’s what you get from being poor, have to work and no chance to just ski all the time.

Happo One south side in the morning sun

It looks like there will be a big dump coming next Wednesday. Before that there’s a chance to ski the bigger lines, so I have to go and do some stretching now.

Endless powder (10th – 23rd January)

Here are some of Ville’s photos between 10th and 23rd January from Japan. Ville’s greetings from this period are easily summarized: The snow is deep and the skiing is great. The full text (in Finnish) and rest of the photos can be found in Ville’s blog. From now on the whole texts (in English) and photos will be published regularly on homeboyski.com, so keep checking.

Living in Innsbruck is cheap

I have spent two seasons in Innsbruck and I have to say that I really love that place. Really good skiing, nice people around and living costs there are cheap, although rent is a little bit higher than here in Rovaniemi, Finland. Getting a room for a season can be a little bit hard, at least if you don’t speak German. Last season we paid about 360€ per month for a single room with a small kitchen and toilet with shower. But since there were at least 3 people living there for most of the winter, it wasn’t that expensive.

Food is cheap in Austria; you can easily make a decent dinner for a couple of euros. Our normal daily budget was about 3€ per guy. This included food for the day and couple of beers every now and then. You just need to make sure that you can make proper pasta and risotto before you go.

One really good thing about living in a town and not at a resort is all the stuff you can do when you’re not skiing. You can go to movies, for which admission is really cheap. Or you can just hang around in the old city, because there are also a lot of interesting museums and castles near by. It’s also easy to go visit München for couple of days and big cities in northern Italy are just a couple hours away.

Skiing in Innsbruck is great, and so is the nightlife

Innsbruck has a pretty lively nightlife as there are parties practically everyday. My favorite place is Limerick Bill’s Irish pub at Maria Theresien Strasse. It has a nice atmosphere and cheap beer; what else could one ask for? It’s sometimes a little bit crowded though. Another nice bar/club is Prometheus in the old city, where there have been some damn hard parties.

If you’re into metal music, take a taxi and ask the driver to take you to Abyss. It’s not in the city center, but well worth the visit. After these places close their doors, you need to check out ”Bögens”. They are small clubs under the railroad, most of them are something like 70 square meters. They usually fill up around four and five in the morning, some of the craziest parties I have ever witnessed have been there. Two of the best places there are Down Under and Plateau.

One thing I kind of miss in Innsbruck is after ski. There’s no after ski, which does save you some money, but you don’t get to meet other skiers and talk about that cool line you skied that day. Of course you can have a beer in every lift station, but it’s not same as Yucatan in Engelberg or Le Pub Mont Fort in Verbier. There are only tourists in Innsbruck. On the other hand this is the best part of skiing near Innsbruck. There are practically no other ski bums competing on lines with you, only some locals. The only place where you really need to be in the first tram is a powder day in Nordpark. It does have the best lift-served skiing near Innsbruck, but the area is kind of small and all the locals will be there on a powder day. Everything gets skied out in a couple of hours, but damn those couple of hours are good.

Ski Innsbruck, Austria – Innsbruck ski area

A ski season ticket in Innsbruck is cheap, only 360€ for Tirol Regio Card including 24 ski resorts. There are three glacier ski resorts also, so there’s always somewhere to ski, even in lousy snow winters. In order to get the season pass, you have to be registered to live in the Tirol region, but if you get a room or an apartment, you’ll have to register anyway. Also Nordpark isn’t included in the pass, but it has a really cheap season ticket, 180€. It’s not really a must to have a season ticket to Nordpark, but I would recommend getting it. There’s a couple of main resorts where to go skiing when living in Innsbruck. You can get free bus rides to the following resorts.

Nordpark 860m-2256m

Nordpark is the ”home hill” in Innsbruck. From the city center it’s about 30 minutes to the top. It’s possible to choose the train or bus line ”J” to get to the cable car station. It’s steep, definitely not a tourist place. There are two cable cars. The first one goes to the middle station. There’s a pretty good snowpark and a superpipe with its own chairlift.   There’s also a second chairlift right under the middle station. You can easily spend one day just using this lift, if the weather is right with either powder or soft spring snow. Since it’s quite steep, everything lift-accessed gets pretty bumpy.

The second cable car leaves from the middle station. It takes skiers to the Hafelekar, 2256m. No prepared slopes down, just two ski routes or lines of your own choose. Marked routes are usually on VW Beetle sized moguls, but if you traverse a bit to skiers left, there are some good lines. Since everything lift-served is on the south side of the Nordkette, you need to be early on powder days. The snow often gets quite wet during the day if the sun is shining. But this is also one of the reasons why Nordpark is a good place, if it’s icy in other resorts but the sun is shining, Nordpark will often offer nice firn or slush, depending on the month. So to summarize, it’s a nice little place with a couple of lifts, a park and steep lines.

Axamer Lizum 1583m-2340m

Axamer is the biggest ski resort near Innsbruck. There’s also sometimes quite a lot tourists, so be prepared to wait in liftlines sometimes. They also have a small park there, no big features, which makes it a good place to train if you like park stuff. Good lift-served skiing, but it also gets skied out pretty fast. If you get there early in the morning and it’s not holiday season, Axamer has couple of fun prepared slopes to charge down, of which the women’s downhill course from the 1976 Olympics being the best.

Most of the lift-served stuff is easy to spot and Axamer has really good sidecountry and backcountry options, which are also easily spotted from lifts. Some of the lines are accessible with just a short hike, but if you bring your touring gear with you, it will expand your possibilities a lot. Free post busses go to Axamer Lizum every hour, so it’s easy to get there. The bus ride takes about 20 minutes from Innsbruck.

Schlick 2000 1014m-2230m

Schlick is the place to ski on stormy days. It features steep treeskiing and a couple of nice chutes. It’s well protected from winds and it often collects lots of snow. It’s the kind of a place where new snow is needed to make the best of it. It doesn’t offer anything special at the lifts, if there’s no new snow. There is a couple of steep and long couloirs, with easy access, but snow conditions often work against skiing those. It is about a 30-minute bus ride from the city, but it’s also possible to get there by train. The train costs a couple of euros, but the views are definitely worth it.

Kühtai 2020m-2520m

This is the highest ski resort near Innsbruck; its bottom station is at 2000m. It’s a beautiful place, with lots and lots of fine sidecountry and backcountry skiing. The slopes by the lifts are good, but they are often a little bit crowded and they probably have the best snowpark near Innsbruck, but no halfpipe.

Almost every good line requires a little hike, either to run, or to return back to the lifts. This is the place to go with touring gear, because there are countless peaks and steep lines which are reachable in a one day trip.

Stubaier Gletcher 1750m-3210m

This is the closest glacier resort near Innsbruck. There are many nice lines by the lifts, but most of them are quite short. All the lift accessible area is pretty flat. There are quite many fun slopes at the glacier, but most of the time these are too crowded. This year they are opening a new lift, which will give some more not-so-flat terrain and definitely good slopes. There are also plenty of good lines within a short tour. Click here for a longer article about Stubai Glacier written by Juho.

Innsbruck is definitely a place where you’ll get much more good skiing if you have a car. Within a 1-hour car ride from town there are many really good resorts that are included in the season pass. Most of these places are small family-oriented resorts, with nobody, and I mean literally nobody, skiing off-piste. I will not mention these places by name, since it’s nice to keep those places that way.

Then there are two more glaciers. Pitztall actually offers really good skiing. There are a lot of  fine lines just under the gondola, if you’re able to poach them. Serfaus is also worth mentioning, with good lift-served stuff and a ”little Alaska” face just within a short hike, you cannot miss it when you look up from the last gondola.

So in short, if you want to try something else next winter than going to stay at one resort, Innsbruck is a fine option. Even if you don’t go by car, it’s easily accessible from Münich airport or from other directions by train. I will certainly go back there in coming winters; it’s the only bigger city which has made a positive impression to me and it is a perfect place for skiing the central and eastern Alps.