This was my second time in the Khibney Mountains and I was fortunate to return with my good friend Ilkka who had been riding out here for the past decade and we had a week to explore. We arrived in the night and found ourselves at a condo right next to the resort for 12$ a day.
Our first day out we decided to climb the mountains accross the valley from the ski hill and get a good idea of what the conditions were like. It was sunny but it was cold being around -25c.
As we climbed we kept getting great views of the surrounding mountains and the Bigwood and Kirovsk area on the right hand side of the photo.
Once on top we took a sun all the way down to the lake finding dust on crust firm conditions top to bottom. It was beautiful but it wasn’t good out.
The next day we drove an hour to the edge of the range hoping to find an area where the wind may had deposited some snow, skinning by major minor operations along the way.
Once on the summit ridge we looked down to old mining areas there were blasted out with Atomic Bombs in the past and another vital mine in the area. It was a wild area.
We found good short laps of open trees making use of our skin track a few times doing 3 runs before heading back to Kirovsk in the late afternoon.
The next day we climbed a roadside mountain I had seen the year before getting into sketchy terrain within a few minutes of leaving the car.
Soon we were scrambling up at exposed ridge slowly following the steps up the steep face.
After a bit of scrambling we were up on the summit ridge and making a plan for which way we should descend the mountain.
We decided to head down the East face in a massive avalanche swatch and found great powder conditions along the way finishing the run riding down to some train tracks where a guard was kind enough to escort me back to the road.
Conditions had gone from firm to fresh after 3 days and we still had 3 more days to make the best out of conditions. I was excited about this new area that had both steeps and mellows to choose from and as cheap as it gets with a ski area.
Thank you for reading and If you enjoyed reading this and want to see more ski tours within the Khibiny Mountains check out this link