|
2006-01-13 A two-days-sleddog-tour in swedish Lapland just to get an impression on how it feels to be a "musher" ;o)
Arriving in Kiruna 27th January gives us a day to acclimate to the cold weather before we will be picked up by our tour-guide.
Here's the plan: being provided with warm clothes, getting a short introduction and right afterwards driving my own 6-dog-sledge in forest areas east of Kiruna. We will probably spend the night in a wilderness hut and finish our husky-tour in the afternoon the next day.
4 girls - 4 sledges - and a weekend full of adventures... Julia
27th January Iris and I flew to Kiruna where we met with the other two girls, Katharina and Katrin. And because our Husky-Tour won’t start until tomorrow, we had a whole day off and decided to visit the famous “Ice Hotel” in Jukkasjärvi http://icehotel.com/ only a short bus ride from Kiruna. Despite a pretty expensive entrance fee we had a good time strolling around the marvellous rooms and ended up enjoying a cocktail in the “Absolut Ice Bar” sitting on reindeer skin by frosty –6 °C. Definitely worth a visit! 28th January Finally, 10 a.m. Niclas from www.huskysafari.com picked us up at STF Vandrarhemet in Kiruna. Half an hour later did we meet our tour guide Thomas (from Switzerland) and of course our dogs ;o) After being equipped with warm clothes (warm boots, overall, gloves and hat) and our sleeping bags we got a short introduction in how to drive the sled without falling off… And we learned the three most important rules (very useful!): - Never fall off the sled
- if you fall off – never let go of the sled
- if you fall off – climb as quickly back on the sled because the dogs won’t wait for you…
Then our journey began… We formed a line and my dogs followed the sled in front of me… it was so exciting staying on the sled with my dogs pulling with all their strength to start running… and then I loosened the security leash and released the break… and the sled jumped forward … Wow! In the beginning I couldn’t enjoy anything of the beautiful landscape… I only held tight to my sled and said to myself: “ Never let go! Never let go!”… But after a while I got a better feeling on how to stay on the sled and how to slow down… Because our dogs were used to the Swedish expressions “vänster” and “höger”… in English “left” and “right” I even tried to order them in another direction – mostly without success ;o) We had a cold, sunny day and it was wonderful to drive over hills, through forests, over snowy fields and frozen lakes. My drive could have been without any problems if not one of my dogs suddenly stopped to pee and all the other dogs got entangled. All my efforts to disentangle them failed and finally “White” began to bite “Nom”… in the end Nom got a bloody but harmless injury on his leg and White was exchanged with another dog. Not that bad – because my new dog “Flash” was one of the dogs that will take part in the “Finnmarkslopet FL-1000” www.finnmarkslopet.no a 1000km dog sledding in Norway. Amazing how much faster you can drive with only one stronger dog in the team :o) After maybe 5 hours dog sledding we arrived at our shelter for the night. A cute little hut with no electricity but of course with a sauna ;o) We drilled a hole in the next frozen lake to supply us and our dogs with water. It was our job to feed the dogs before we finally started to think about our own supper. Our meal was quite delicious – mashed potatoes and pan-fried reindeer and for me of course something vegetarian. We had some good talks with Thomas while cooking and he told us quite a bit about dog sledding, breeding and his life with his dogs… After supper we had to test the sauna, of course ;o) and ended up running around naked in the snow… A good ending of an amazing day! And we fall asleep, resting on reindeer skin and listening to the yowl of our dogs… 29th January Got up at 7 a.m. to water the dogs before enjoying our own breakfast. This time yoking our dogs was easier because we now knew how to handle it. Everyone of us was responsible for his own sled so I decided to change the location of my four dogs… worked out better for me with the more experienced dogs as leaders. We had a quite exhausting day because we often had to help our dogs by walking/running behind the sled when we drove in deeper snow or uphill. The second day went by much too fast so we were really sorry to reach our starting point about noon. After a final cup of tea and a big farewell to Thomas and our dogs we headed back towards Kiruna. Only two days – but an amazing experience! I will definitely do that again – next time maybe with 6 dogs and some days longer… ;o) |
