Group of friends don’t need snow to have fun with freestyle summer skiing

From Finland, there is a band of extreme athletes who are finding new and interesting ways to freestyle ski during the summer months

If you love skiing and snowboarding, the summer can be a constant reminder the winter is far away. For those needing to feel the extreme thrills and twists, there are all sorts of ways to enjoy freestyle summer skiing that you can turn to.

Here in the UK, athletes are hitting the indoor slopes or one of the many dry slopes to keep their skills sharp. Others are going a bit farther afield and have found downhill excitement in the dirt mountains of southern Iran.

But there is a band of extreme athletes from Finland who are finding even more interesting ways to ski during the summer months. Calling themselves Real Skifi, the group have been filming their adventures – all done with a noticeable lack of snow – in different parts of the world. They have skied on grass, in forests and on water. To create the speed, they have used gravity, skateboards and Segways.

One memorable stunt is of them skiing across a bridge on a skateboard, finishing it off with a jump into the river below.

There is very little the group won’t ski on – and sometimes their adventures border on the dangerous. The group has created a YouTube Channel to document their exploits. One of their videos even includes the lads showing off their trip to the UK’s dry slopes.

The group has been finding new and inventive ways to ski since 2011. There are five of them, including twin brothers Ilkka and Verneri Hannula, Anton Geier, Juho Kilkki and Janne Korpela.

Winter may still be a few months away, but it’s the perfect time to plan your perfect skiing getaway to a luxury chalet in France. For the boys in Real Skifi, their passion lies with new ways to freestyle ski all year. But still nothing compares to the finely sculpted pistes of La Rosiere, Meribel and Courchevel.