Behind the scenes

Outdoor Expert Saariselkä is a family-owned company run by Tiina and Reima Idström.

We have spent our entire lifes doing outdoor and endurance sports. Our first love is cross-country skiing which we both have learned as soon as we learned how to walk. We have spent our childhood and later life training and racing on cross-country skis. We both still race in cross-country skiing.

We have started mountain biking during the "first wave" when mountain biking came to Finland in the 90s. Reima has even raced as a junior in the 90s, and both of us started racing again around 2010. Since 2011 we have been arranging Saariselkä MTB Stages mountain biking event in Saariselkä. Since that we have also been part of the development of the mountain biking environment in our region.

Because of our long experience in outdoor sports we know that equipment really matters. We only rent and sell equipment that we use or could use ourselves. If it's not good enough for us, then it's not good enough for our clients either!

On our tours we want to show our guests the best trails and most beautiful spots in Urho Kekkonen national park and Hammastunturi Wilderness area both of which we know like the back of our hands. In our ski school we really want our guests to learn the basic techniques of cross-country skiing. We teach both total beginners and more experienced skiers.

Besides our sports careers, we have spent time in the academic world and thus achieved degrees which help us to run this company. Reima is a Bachelor of Sports Studies and Tiina is Master of Administrative Science. During our sports careers we have achieved medals in Finnish Championships in both cross-country skiing and mountain biking as juniors and as elite athletes.