Day 3: Weather forecast frustrations...(in a good way)

Anyone who knows me well will know that I take more than a passing interest in weather forecasts. Don't ask me why, it's just been that way for longer than I care to remember. I wouldn't like to admit to how often I check forecasts, as I might be accused of being on some sort of spectrum, which, in all honesty, would probably be correct! Anyway, with the promise (on more than one website) of heavy snow due to hit Levi between 1pm and 2pm today, we had already decided that we'd be up early, get to the slopes bang on 9.30am for the opening of the lifts and ski until we were forced off the slopes by snow. In my mind, we would be home for lunch. We'd then decided that we'd walk over to the Levitunturi Spa Hotel to enjoy the water pools and saunas there in the afternoon. 

The slopes were in really fine condition first thing in the morning. Yesterday's very warm weather was gone, with a frost overnight having frozen things up nicely on the pistes and the snow was nice and firm, with the odd icy patch. It would be fair to say that of the four of us, only Anna wasn't over enamoured by the conditions, though the rest of us loved them. As the morning wore on, she got used to them though and relaxed nicely.

Click on the piste map to see the runs we skied today, described below.

It was this morning that I began to really appreciate just how large the ski area is here in Levi, as we worked our way from the front slopes clockwise around to the North East slopes, then to the Eastern Slopes, and finally reaching the slopes above South Point at about 11.30am. This represented a lot of skiing and a lot of runs covered,as we repeated some of the runs that we hadn't covered before today. Looking at the piste map below, we started on the chairlift marked N at the front pistes, skied down to lift 3, then skied down run 14.3 to lift 14, and from the top of lift 14 we headed over to run 5.1 which we skied down to lift 5. From the top of lift 5, we headed down run 5.4 and then joined run 6.1 which led us to the foot of lift 6. From the top of lift 6, we then continued on run 6.2, and back up lift 6, from which we then skied down run 7.1 which brought us down to the bottom of lift 7. We headed towards run 8-10 from the top of lift 7 and this connected us to the top of the South Point slopes. This is where we stayed until after lunch in what was lovely sunny weather, though it was windy at the top. But where was the promised snow? Nowhere to be seen!

Reindeer burger for lunch - delicious!

In Levi, it seems you are nobody unless you own an Audi!

At the top of run 8.2

Liv at lunch.

We got back to the house at around 3pm, and headed off to swim and relax tired legs in the variety of saunas and jacuzzis as well as the 9 different pools, 3 of which are outside! A really good end to the day, and now, writing this after dinner, the promised snow still hasn't arrived. It's still sunny, with the unusually unique light here that we always enjoy on our summer holidays in central Finland.

Today, instead of taking many pictures, I was fiddling around with a wee helmet camera, like the one our good friend Pascal used a couple of years ago in Chartreuse to film us on the slopes. I won't be able to share the footage until I edit it back home, but it looks very impressive quality for such a cheap wee device.