Tour skating
From Freepedia
Tour skating, or trip skating, is a form of ice skating on natural ices. Special skates which are longer than regular ice skates are used, as well as various types of safety equipment: a pair of ice prods, an ice pike or a pair of them, a throwing line, and a rucksack with waistband and groin strap, containing exchange clothes in plastic bags as buoyancy aid. You should never tour skate alone but always have company on the ice. And you should have knowledge about natural ices, or skate with others who have that knowledge.
Tour skating is a somewhat popular winter activity in Sweden and Finland, where the skating season can last up to 5-6 months in some areas due to the presence of many lakes of various sizes plus an archipelago, combined with winter temperatures frequently changing from below zero to above zero and back several times during the winter. In late autumn/early winter the small lakes freeze first, some years already in late October but usually in November, and the skating season has started. If snow falls later these lakes can become unskateable. Next the somewhat larger lakes freeze and become skateable for awhile until the next major snowfall.
In January-February parts of the archipelago in the Baltic sea often freezes. Now is the time for very long skating tours if you have enough strength - skating 60-80 km in one day is not uncommon and some people have skated over 150 km in one day, on natural ices. When winter ends and spring arrives, one must be careful about when to skate. If skateable ices are found in April (which isn't uncommon in Sweden and Finland), it is adviceable to skate in the morning only and get off the ice before noon. An ice that is deadly in the afternoon can sometimes be quite safe early next morning if the night is clear and cold.
Sweden's largest tour skating association is SSSK - on their start page you can find many beautiful photographs from skating tours in Sweden (reload the start page for a new image to appear; click on the image for a larger image). Finland's largest tour skating association is skrinnari.fi
External Links in English
Photo Albums of Tour Skating
- (Captions are in Swedish)
