While in Rovaniemi – Lapland’s capital – last February while preparing the traverse of the Bothnian gulf in the Baltic sea, we came across to the Rovaniemi 150 race. This is one of the few artic races you can participate by foot, skis or fat-bikes and, needless to mention, is now in my bucket list… I’ve never ride a fat bike in the snow but I am confident this is an interesting project to consider for 2019. (2018 is full already with our project “The last ice” – an exploratory expedition in 4 stages to the worlds remote sweet water lakes finishing in the North Pole).

The Rovaniemi 150 race organiser is a friend of ours – Alex Simon Casanovas from Polar Guide Logistics and this year celebrated their 5th anniversary. Alex is a mountain and polar guide based in Rovaniemi and the race is something he organises on the side with the help of a bunch of volunteers in the region.

To participate in Rovaniemi150 it is not necessary to have experience in other winter races but people who participate must have experience in ultramarathons or long distance races or long distance traverses or winter mountain traverses and it is strongly recommended to have experience in winter bivouacs.

We understand that anybody who intends to participate in this kind of race without previous winter experience must have the common sense to get good information about all that is necessary to face a competition like this one.

There are some good blogs and websites out there were people share their experiences for this race and I recommend this entry from Paul Errington in Alpkit and the BikeSoup Mag’s entry for Scott Swalling.

If you are interested as well, the dates for the next edition are: 16th -19th February 2018 and you can register from the 1st August here. Good luck!