During winter and spring, we had a long internship period and it was fun to meet all classmates again. We had three intensive weeks full of different kind of skills with climbing, kayaking and even sailing!

Marie Louise Ter Horst and Sampsa Vähä-Karvia

First, we learned different techniques on tree and rock climbing. We were climbing on multiple locations indoors and outdoors but by far the best place we visited was Kauhala, a climbing spot at Kirkkonummi. There were multiple different routes for beginners and more advanced climbers. We practised rappelling by different techniques, created rappelling point for customer use and worked on multiple problems which might occur during climbing. Weather was at its best for climbing and few mosquitos didn’t matter so much because we had such a fun time hanging on the walls ?

After some intensive climbing we started kayaking from our school’s swimming pool doing some wet exiting exercises. This was a prerequisite to be able to continue our kayaking outdoors on lake Sääksjärvi, next to our school campus. There we had a few days of practising different paddling and steering techniques. We got to perform also different kind of rescue situations if you happen to capsize your kayak, on a purpose, or by accident. We trained some rodeo rescuing, Eskimo rescuing and some tried to do a full Eskimo roll. Sauna was warm so it didn’t matter that water was still cold when we could go to warm ourselves between rescuing sessions.

On our second day on Lake Sääksjärvi we got to do different plays and games wit our kayaks to put our newly attained skills on use. Former Finnish presidents got rescued from afloat and we ended our outdoor kayaking sessions with a nice little tour around the lake. On our last day of kayaking skills, we had a second pool session where we dug into the art of a perfect Eskimo roll and how it is done correctly. After some trial and error there were few happy faces who managed to do the full roll and got upright after capsizing in a pool.

We also got a chance through our teacher to experience some sailing in Helsinki archipelago on a beautiful yacht which had an interesting history with around the world sailing. Weather gods were again on our sides and there was a sunny and windy evening with waves that reached a two-meter mark according to our skipper Palle.

Now summer vacation waits, and it is time to put our newly gained skills on climbing and kayaking in use, because in August when the school starts again we are going to go for a multiday kayaking trip into Ekenäs archipelago in southern Finland!

(All photos: Marie-Louise Ter Horst)