Teambuilding Karelian Experience in St. Petersburg, Russia

Karelian Experience

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Program

Ruskeala is a village on the northern coast of Lake Ladoga, 20 kilometers from the city of Sortavala and 290 kilometers from St. Petersburg. The nearby marble quarry is widely known, in which from the middle of the 18th century marble was mined for the palaces of St. Petersburg, in particular St. Isaac's Cathedral, until about the middle of the last century. At the moment, the quarry is flooded with the purest water. The walls of the resulting marble canyon go up to 30 meters in height from the surface of the water, and the same in depth. Around the main canyon are less visited developments - also mostly filled with water. Since mining was carried out, among other things, by pits, rather long adits have been preserved in the walls of the canyon, and some of them are accessible only from the surface of the water, and some are completely flooded.

Karelian Experience Photo

For team building in Ruskeala Mountain Park, the PhotoChallenge quest is perfect. During the quest in Ruskeala you have to find a locomotive, catch an elk, sail through the canyon on a boat, ride a trolley through the canyon and try a real Karelian pie - a gate!

The quarry is surrounded by a magnificent Karelian landscape and a river called Tohmajoki. Downriver, close to Sortavala, there is a waterfall, or to be precise, a scenic threshold, where an episode of the movie The Dawns Here Are Quiet was filmed. Further down the river you will find an impressive waterfall called Ryuyumyakoski, and the remains of an old power plant. Though it is claimed to be Finnish, most likely, it was built by the Russians in the early twentieth century.

The area around Ruskeala provides innumerable opportunities for both corporate and private extreme and adventure events. They can be organized in the form of a competitive game for several teams, or a dynamic raid for the entire group. Depending on your fitness level and preferences the program may include:

• Boat or canoe races in the marble canyons, including visits to the flooded caves,
• Rafting on Tohmajoki River,
• Map orienteering in the spectacular area around the quarry,
• GPS orienteering,
• Bicycle races on dirt tracks using maps or GPS orienteering,
• Orienteering in the underground mining tunnels with a real carbide lamp
• Travel on a retro train - a real steam locomotive.

Karelian Experience Video

For those who like it hot:

• Canyoning – descending on a rope, in a safety belt to the Ryuyumyakoski waterfall. (Karelian rivers have their sources in the marshes and continue on the flatlands, and, unlike the mountain rivers, water warms up in the summer.)
• Diving in the Marble Canyon and adjacent canyons,
• Descent down the canyon into an inflatable boat (with the safety harness),
• Climbing the walls of the canyon (with the safety harness),
• Jumping into deep water from the 8-meter-high canyon walls (in a life jacket, with a guide in the water).