“COME on kids, get your coats on,” I yell, as I throw open the door to our ski apartment. “The northern lights are dancing again.”
“Do we have to?” My nine-year-old daughter asks, glancing up from her tablet. “We already saw them yesterday.”
“And on Monday,” her 11-year-old brother, Harrison, adds.
I look across at my wife, who also looks unenthusiastic about joining me for the 50-yard trek to a prime viewing spot near our apartment. “Unbelievable,” I mumble, as I head back out to watch them by myself.
Reaching the viewing spot, less than a minute later, I find a couple of fellow hunters facing north toward a reasonably bright display. In a restaurant to our left I can see a dozen or so people eating inside. If this were the UK, I’d probably run in and tell them that one of the most famous natural phenomena on earth is going on outside. But this is Pyhä in Lapland, and it’s no big deal to see aurora here. Those people are here primarily, to ski. And what a place to ski Pyhä is, especially for novices or young families.
Today is a Saturday, on the last weekend of the Christmas holidays and we pretty much had the long green runs to ourselves for large portions of the day. Even the red and black runs further up the mountain looked empty. Many Finns will have been heading home at the end of their holidays, but even earlier in the week there were no queues for the lifts and huge open swathes of piste without anyone on them.
I haven’t had the same trouble coaxing the family to join me skiing. They can’t get enough of hurtling down the slopes, even though the temperature dipped below minus 20 degrees on several days. The only time I could get them off piste during the daytime was to try out some of Pyhä’s other snow related adventures. The first of these was ice climbing with Bliss Adventure on a frozen waterfall, a 10-minute walk from our hotel. None of us had ice climbed before but instruction and equipment were provided, as well as hot drinks and a warm fire, and we all exceeded our expectations.
The second was Pyhäkuru Adventure Park, a via ferrata style assault course best described as Go Ape on ice, with ziplines and rope bridges spanning the frozen canyon and waterfall. Both were incredibly exciting adventures and easy to access from the resort. A little further from the hotel are reindeer and husky farms, but since we’re travelling home via Rovaniemi - the capital of the Arctic - we’ve stuck mainly to skiing and aurora spotting in Pyhä.
Next morning the children are devastated to be leaving Pyhä. I console them with the plans I have for our two days in Rovaniemi. We’ll take a husky safari, go ice swimming, ice skating at Snowman World and get to see Santa and the elves at the Santa Claus Village, where it’s possible to see the big guy in his natural habitat 365 days a year. They board the ski bus, about 20 yards from our hotel room, with a smile on their faces.
We disembark 90 minutes later at Apukka Resort, close to Rovaniemi Airport. The resort area is in a dark skies spot that’s even better than Pyhä for spotting the northern lights. Consequently, the owners have built scores of “Aurora Cabins” and glass igloos allowing you to watch the lights without leaving the warmth of your room.
The second thing I notice about the resort is a strange ghostly noise drifting from the other side of the road where the bus dropped us off. It takes a few minutes before I realise it’s huskies howling. The resort runs various husky safaris from its onsite husky farm. But we’re not here for the huskies or glass igloos, we’re here for a sauna and ice bath experience on the resort’s frozen lake. I’m terrified of the thought of plunging myself into the water, especially as it’s currently minus 18 degrees according to the giant thermometer in the main square of the resort.
Our sauna host leads us to the frozen lake, past a small sledging and tubing slide and we see a couple of groups ice fishing a few hundred metres past our lakeside sauna. The host has got the wood burner up to full heat and has towels, dressing-gowns and slippers ready for us all. He goes through a safety briefing then tells us the swimming hole is a lot smaller than normal as the weather has been unseasonably cold...for Lapland.
We change, sit in the sauna for around five minutes, until we’re well and truly baking, then head out to the steps leading to the hole in the ice. The kids have volunteered me to go first and watch as I dip my toe in the frigid water. A couple of minutes later I’m warming up in the sauna, chuckling at the sight of my son climbing into the lake, his face contorted in pain. To be fair he stays in longer than I did, but once out he’s running toward the sauna like there’s a polar bear on his heels. A couple of minutes later the feeling has returned to our frozen limbs and we’re both up and, gluttons for punishment that we are, ready to do it all again.
* Ryanair fly to Rovaniemi until late March and have flights from Liverpool from £40 return. The ski bus from Rovaniemi runs to Pyhä four times a day from the Rovaniemi Airport, costing around 33€ each way for an adult and half this for a child. Our apartment in Pyhä had two double beds and a well-equipped kitchen. Six nights cost around £700 in the Christmas holidays. Ice climbing and Pyhäkuru Adventure Park were booked online via pyha.fi. Apukka Resorts have a number of sauna experiences. They also have city centre apartments in Rovaniemi, where we stayed for one night.
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