Gone mushing

I started the last day both sorry that it was coming to an end and happy at the thought of imminent rest! I had started the journey just getting over a nasty cold and it had been hard work throughout. There’s a lot to do to stay alive out here—fetching water, fetching and splitting wood, chopping meat for the dogs. And at these temperatures everything you do seems to require more effort. My flagging dog team hadn’t helped my energy levels either. I’d had to scoot or run a lot on the hills.

We stopped for lunch at a hut on the edge of lake Vuontisjävi. Reikka prepared reindeer soup over a fire in a wooden Kota. Around the roof above the fire where the rails where fishermen smoke their fish in the summer.

After lunch we set out down a short, steep bank to the lake and took a sharp right out onto the frozen water. The sharp right was too much for me and my now rather lightly loaded sled and I capsized, falling off into the deep powdery slow. I rolled over to see sled and dogs heading off fast. Raikka was shouting at Sophie to catch the dogs as they came past, but underneath two balaclavas and a big furry trapper hat she couldn’t hear a thing! Fortunately Raikka managed to catch them and I ran back across the ice pick them up again.

As we drove along the edge of the lake I managed to get this snippet of video on Sophie’s camera. The wind across the microphone made a truly awful sound that simply didn’t convey the quietness of this way of travelling at all, so I’ve removed the sound from it.

Later, crossing another lake, we saw some reindeer walking steadily towards our route. They seemed almost unperturbed by us, looking inquisitively but carrying on regardless towards the spot I would shortly reach. I thought I was in for a real close up view when I heard the buzz of an engine behind me. The reindeer bolted as two snow mobiles shot passed us at ridiculous speed and I realised that Finnish expletives are a serious gap in my knowledge. Along with pretty much all Finnish words of course, but just at that moment there was something I really wanted to shout at the arctic boy racers who had just disturbed my tranquillity. You could tell we were nearly back.

When we got back to Hariniva the dogs were clearly pleased to be home and set about the important business of scrapping with the neighbours. After a quick look at some of the puppies we picked up our packs and headed to reception to check in for our final two nights in Lapland.

Tags: arctic, dog sledding, husky, lapland, Video