An Annual Ski Trip Turned Into a Quest for Survival

Liisa and Tuomo Peltola step from their bungalow in a forested suburb of Turku, a small city in southwest Finland. It is just before 8 a.m. on a sunny Saturday morning at the end of March in 2015, nippy but with the promise of warmer weather to come. They are about to embark on a 1,200-kilometer two-day car trip to the fells of Lapland above the Arctic Circle for their annual four-day ski trip.

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The couple check their backpacks: sleeping bags, instant coffee and two water-resistant covers they’ll use at night in the rustic wilderness huts they plan to shelter in. They’ll stop en route for a night and buy food. After attaching their backcountry skis atop their hatchback, they settle down for the two-day drive to just beyond Kilpisja¨rvi, a settlement of Sami, an indigenous people also known as Laplanders. There, they’ll begin their trek.

It’s easy driving, and on occasion, Liisa points out a bird that Tuomo must squint to see, for he has taught her to love birdwatching as much as he does.

“You can see so much farther than me,” he grumbles good-naturedly.

“Yes,” she says happily. “I can.”

There has always been a bit of competition between them, from birdwatching to running and skiing. Both are passionate about orienteering, a sport that requires them to find their way in unfamiliar terrain with a map and compass, and the wilderness is their playing field.

The ski trip in Lapland is one of their favorites, a straightforward trajectory they have done at least five times before: 30 kilometers due east across a fell, a high, mostly barren landscape, with rolling hills, some steep climbs and jagged boulders and rocks. Here, they can be alone in nature, with only the huts—a system of bare bone, sparsely spaced structures—their only contact with civilization.

Married for only four years, they met over half a century ago, when Liisa, now 65 was a shy, tall, talented teen with a thick blonde braid who a decade later would win the women’s world orienteering championship. Tuomo, nearly six years older, with craggy features and a dry sense of humor, was in the same orienteering club, already married, an engineer and maker of maps.

“Back then, I never imagined I would fall in love with you,” remarks Liisa. “I thought you were so technical and dull.”

“In some way, we stored our feelings,” he says.

There were other marriages along the way, and children to raise – Liisa’s three sons, and Tuomo’s son and daughter. On their first ‘date’ about 14 years ago, she thought it was just a walk in the forest. For Tuomo, it was more than that.

“I wanted to kiss you,” he says. And he did. Ten years later, they were married.

By Sunday morning, as they reach their starting point, the wind has picked up to a gale force 72 km an hour and is blowing snow that turns the world white with fat, black clouds overhead. But the weather doesn’t scare them. As orienteers, they’ve dealt with bad weather before.

SOURCE: RD