# Riding in Finland



## outsider0409 (May 5, 2008)

I'm thinking about grad school in Jyväskylä, Finland. Besides the super cold winters, I'm definitely worried about the mtb scene. Good trails to ride or an almost non-existent scene? How easy is it to get a person and bike to more mountainous areas of Europe?


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## perttime (Aug 26, 2005)

There's no mountains in Finland 

The woods are full of trails though 

If you can live with smaller ups and downs, you'll have a plenty of riding. Jyväskylä isn't completely flat, so you can find a little bit of elevation there too. I don't know much about the MTB (maastopyöräily) scene in Jyväskylä, except there must be one.

Just about "everybody" talks about riding, bikes, and rides at Fillari-lehden foorumi

If you can manage to register, there's people there who can answer your questions in English.

Unless you want to strike out blind and go exploring, you'll need someone local to show you some routes. Mostly, there's nothing official about trails and they are not marked in any way.

To get to more mountainous areas, you fly to Germany, France, Italy, etc. or go to Åre in Sweden or maybe somewhere in Norway.


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## perttime (Aug 26, 2005)

Found some recent "Enduro" race footage from the Laajavuori ski slope just outside town. The clip seems to run a bit smoother with HD off:






MTB Enduro #4 2011, Laajavuori from Tommi Ranta on Vimeo.

A few more clips from the area:
http://vimeo.com/search/videos/search:mtb jyväskylä/st/95644ef6

Topo map
Most routes marked on the map are probably too wide and smooth to be interesting.

Gallery for a recent Marathon race in Jyväskylä:
http://jyps.kuvat.fi/kuvat/MTB+Marathon+Laajavuori+11.6.2011+/

Email for what seems to be the biggest bike club in Jyväskylä: jyps (at) jyps.info

How the trails stay open in winter depends a lot on luck with snowfall. If trails are not open, people are probably skiing XC or at the slope.


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## outsider0409 (May 5, 2008)

Thanks for the info and links. What are the summers like up there? Like how many months of good riding do you usually get? Of course if I do end up moving there I'm definitely going to have to get into xc skiing or something.


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## perttime (Aug 26, 2005)

Most of the time, the riding season - or riding days - depends on what kind of conditions you LIKE to ride in: not what conditions you CAN ride in.

This summer, the temps stayed between 20 and 25 Celsius, with high humidity, for pretty long. Here, 25 C is where old people start dying of the heat  We get rainy days in Spring, Summer, and Fall. I rarely ride in wet weather but that is just because I don't care for the cleanup and the rocks and roots get too slimy for my taste when wet.

Winter doesn't necessarily stop you from riding either but the days get short, so you need a good light unless you have time to ride in the middle of the day.

Here's a winter clip someone posted from my area, a couple of hours from Jyväskylä:


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## Xizor1 (Aug 27, 2010)

Although I don't have any real MTB experience from Jyväskylä region I would bet that there are many kilometers of good trails in there.

In Finland we have a law that enables all the people to use the forests quite freely (walking & cycling) even if they are someone's "private property". So you can imagine that this generates a lot of very good trails for MTB usage. 

For example I live in a really small town (15 000 people) about 150 km south of Jyväskylä and even in here we have a solid 40 km of good trails ranging from rocky & rooty technical stuff to very smooth single tracks. 

But as said by perttime the height differences a quite low and almost all the trails are not mapped so you'll have to have some local guides to show you around.


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## ryansuske (Jul 8, 2011)

This thread was pretty old, but if you are still in the region....there is a very strong mountain biking scene in Estonia (2 hour boat ride south of Helsinki). You can find information at Elion Estonian Cup - Eesti Rattamaratonide Sari or KALENDER - SPORTINFO


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## Bewelnak (Oct 21, 2009)

Any fatbikes showing up in Finland? With the condition descriptions that you guys are mentioning, it would seem only natural?

I'm wondering what events/races might be up that way - we have all the fatbike races ( http://twenty2cycles.com/events ) popping up here so it got me thinking.


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## perttime (Aug 26, 2005)

I know there's some fat bikes around. I have yet to see one in my town (Tampere).

I recall some guys in coastal areas, at least, have fat bikes: loose sand is more common there. Also somebody has been doing multi-day trips on one, up in Lapland, Again, loose sand and pieces of wetland are pretty common along the routes there. I think there's a thread from a Lapland trip in the Fat Bikes section.

In winter conditions near towns, the snow often gets packed so well on trails that "normal" tires work well.... or you have so much fluffy snow that nothing will float on it. Sometimes those 4" tires would certainly be more forgiving.


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## The Giant Yeti Girl (Nov 27, 2013)

Hello everyone, I wish to ask about MTB in Heinola, Finland. I am going there next month for a week for work. any one knows of an MTB club, community, riders there?

Save me... It will be a long week


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## perttime (Aug 26, 2005)

Here's an outdoor map of Heinola:

https://81.175.180.80/NR/rdonlyres/...524899C4F/0/2014Heinolaulkoilukartta20151.jpg

Some of the routes on the map are specified for MTB too, but some are ski trails (no-no) when there's snow. See the legend on the left of the map.
As far as I can tell, there's a "Heinolan MTB-Club", there, but I failed to find a contact.

Here's somebody's video fron the area in September:





What the conditions are when you are there is anybody's guess. Snow? Ice? Wet and dirty? Dry dirt is unlikely this time of the year.


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## Ivan67 (Aug 23, 2013)

perttime said:


> I know there's some fat bikes around. I have yet to see one in my town (Tampere).
> 
> I recall some guys in coastal areas, at least, have fat bikes: loose sand is more common there. Also somebody has been doing multi-day trips on one, up in Lapland, Again, loose sand and pieces of wetland are pretty common along the routes there. I think there's a thread from a Lapland trip in the Fat Bikes section.
> 
> In winter conditions near towns, the snow often gets packed so well on trails that "normal" tires work well.... or you have so much fluffy snow that nothing will float on it. Sometimes those 4" tires would certainly be more forgiving.


Our group normally winters in Lapland, this year we could not make it and got stuck here in Austria which is still nice too.

Lapland is very nice, but it is not like we fly up there and just camp. We start down in Italy and make our way north; riding down through Finland and Sweden during the Spring is wonderful. The laws are something along the line of Open Range, basically you have the right to camp, hike and ride all you want in the bush, even on private property as long as it does not bother any agriculture operations or horticulture operations.

In the past winters we always rented out this very large barn that has space to set up about 40 tents inside of it and it has a wood burning stove in it. Between all of us we pay for 3 months of winter like 2K, that allows us to trap, fish, ride, MD; really what ever we want just as long as we keep the place up.

Such place are all over Scandinavia, for cheap to rent out. Heck you can buy a decent cabin in the bush up there for pennies too. In Finland the new thing is to purchase a very cheap bush cabin and then flip it on the German market or another market for 30 times more than you paid.

Some things up in the countries can really cost a good deal of money if you are a city person; however the laws those countries have you can live like a king if you harvest, gather and hunt your own weight down.


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## perttime (Aug 26, 2005)

Ivan67 said:


> ...
> Some things up in the countries can really cost a good deal of money if you are a city person; however the laws those countries have you can live like a king if you harvest, gather and hunt your own weight down.


Careful with the hunting!
You can pick berries and mushrooms all you want, and some forms of fishing are OK in most areas. For any kind of hunting, you must have a national permit (= prove that you know the laws and the species) and permission from whoever owns the land. Getting caught for illegal hunting can get you in trouble....


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