Dog sledding

I had this vision of traversing white wilderness with the only sound being the swish of the sled on snow, but the reality was a mad cacophony of barking, whining and howling.

When we first arrived at the kennels we met our vaguely psychopathic guide Marcus. He proceeded to do the obligatory guide activity of regaling us with previous horror stories. Although as he had frostbite on his face from a snow storm he got caught in on the previous trip, these may not all have been exaggerated.

We were soon introduced to the rest of our group. Christiane, a purple haired geophysicist who had studied the northern lights in Alaska. Sapna, a sound technician who was on her first solo overseas adventure following a recent break-up. Frank, an anaesthetist from Belgium and Mario, the ubiquitous traveller who had done it all before. He really had, it was his eighth dog sledding tour. Together we were a fairly quiet group, comfortable with enjoying the surroundings in silence, the dogs not do much. The start of the dog sledding was deafening. There were 30 dogs, 7 sleds and 6 tourists wondering what we had got ourselves in for. How were we supposed to control 4 rambunctious huskies?

I had 2 black dogs in the lead, Nero and Hassle, with 2 white dogs behind who I'll call B1 and B2 as I had no hope of pronouncing their Swedish names, let alone spelling them. Hassle became a bit of a favourite as she was half the size of the other dogs, but seemed to have twice as much pulling power. Plus she was a total sook. I did get laughed at when I built up a wind break for her one night as she looked so cold.

The sled came with a variety of braking systems. A rope that could be attached to trees or posts when available. A snow hook that you had to stomp into the snow to secure the sled when stopped. A strong foot brake with massive spikes for slowing down the sled going downhill or stopping. A milder foot brake with two blades on the bottom to slow down if you were quicker than the person in front. The acceleration method involved lifting the brakes and letting the dogs go. My 4 had the ability to coordinate their leaps forward, so I would occasionally start moving despite applying all the brakes at my disposal.

Once the dogs were allowed to run the noise subsided and just as I'd hoped the only sound was the quiet swish of the sled on the snow. The scenery was spectacular. We started in birch forests, winding between trees, but soon we were high in the mountains travelling through valleys with mountains on all sides. We were incredibly lucky with the weather, mostly blue skies and little to no wind although it was a little chilly. The temperature was mostly around -15 during the day, dipping as low as -32 at night. The warmest day was also the day we weren't able to move due to the snow and high winds, it reached -9 that day!

The most magical moments were those times when I lost sight of everyone so it was really just me and my four dogs surrounded by a beautiful white wilderness.