Wanting to make the most of our final day of the trip we purchased a two hour ticket to Big Wood Ski resort. While it’s not the greatest resort it does have some fun sidecountry and our plan was to show our friend Ben what Bigwood ski resort had to offer.

After a great morning at 25 Km ski center we drove towards Big Wood noticing that some clouds were coming in. It seemed they were hovering just above the summits so we bought our tickets and were on our way up the Gondola.

 

Once off the Gondola we put our boards on our backpacks and were off on the bootpack to the summit. Quickly we found ourselves in the clouds and realized our original plans would have to change. The problem was that we could barely see anything and once passing the main summit there were only a few safe spots to drop in.

We decided to focus our attention on a nice line at the end of the ridge. We carefully navigated from pole to pole, making sure not to get to close to what we thought was the edge.

 

As it was Ben’s first time at the resort he was a bit sketched out walking in a white out but fortunately Ilkka and I had been there before and felt confident. Once we were in the right area we took a few turns into the bowl and found ourselves below the clouds.

 

Making our way down into the gully we had a great view towards the town of Kirovsk.

 

Once at the top of the gully we had a quick chat about conditions. The previous time we had rode the line it had slabbed so we needed to ride one at a time and minimize exposure.

Ben dropped in first to find great and stable snow making a turn on the steepest section without causing the snow to move.

 

 

One by one we made our way down the gully meeting up in the upper section followed by the lower section.

Once both Ben and I made it down to our waiting point we made sure to ride up onto the side of the gully in case Ilkka caused an avalanche, if this did happen then we wouldn’t get caught in it.

Out of all the runs in and near Big Wood Ski resort this is probably one of my favorite. It’s both a unique gully and has relatively easy access. While Ben only got one line in Big Wood it was a really nice one. It was a bit of a shame that we hiked in a whiteout so he couldn’t see but we made the most out of it.

 

From our exit we had to walk a little ways back to the car at the Big Wood Ski resort as the clouds were lowering. This was our final day of riding before driving back to Finland the next morning.

 

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