Finland

I've been in Finland for a few days now, doing some filming and hanging out in Helsinki. The climbing here is pretty nice, but I think it must be very hard to develop new boulders because most of the boulders here are well hidden in the thick forest. When the Finns find something new though it seems to be pretty good. I've just been out a couple days so far, to a nearby area called Sipoo, which is about 20 minutes from Helsinki. Nalle has done most of the boulders around here so it's fun to be able to pick and choose which ones to film. One problem we filmed is called Hyper Gravity and is a long problem which climbs out a horizontal roof on amazing little incut holds.


Hypergravity!

Thus far I have met about a dozen Finns. I have a hard time remembering all their names, and an even harder time pronouncing them, but they're all friendly and very fun to hang out with. We've been out to a few night clubs and overall everyone is social, happy, and eager to hear how my trip to Finland is going. Maybe the worst part is the price of beer, which is absolutely outrageous and may in fact lead to civil war. One can of beer will cost you about 4 dollars if you buy it at the grocery store. At a bar, expect to pay from 7 - 9 dollars for a beer.

Today we went bridge jumping with some of Nalle's friends. It's a fun activity and not too hard to pull off when you're hung over on a Sunday.

Finland Preview from Chuck Fryberger on Vimeo.

Nalle Hukkataival pushes one of his friends off a bridge.

Part of the mission here is to capture Nalle's lifestyle around Helsinki, and one cool thing he does sometimes is ride his longboard around town to see friends or go to the gym to train. We shot a couple longboarding scenes and here's a frame from one of the tunnels. We called the emergency number and told them we were going to be using a smoke machine for a while, and they said it was cool.



Longboarding in Helsinki

The next few days will be spent trying to send a hard trad project which lies a couple hours from Helsinki.

Until next time,

Chuck