Arctic Circle Dog Sled Challenge

In March 2012 I travelled to north Norway and the Arctic Circle, to dog sled over 250km across Lapland in 6 days. Our fantastic Alaskan Huskies took us to desolate, wild and beautiful places running from Norway, along the border with Finland and down into Sweden. Camping out in temperatures below minus 20 degrees added to the challenge!
Photographs from the challenge are shown below.

spectacular views as we fly in to Tromso, (pop 68,000), at 69 degrees north we are over 200 miles inside the Arctic Circle

our first night we slept in a “lavvu”, traditional dwelling of the Sami (the indigenous people of Lapland)

this was to be as comfortable as it gets over the next 6 days ... sleeping on reindeer skins, in arctic sleeping bags, around a large log fire. Temperatures were already below minus 10 ...

... ready to go ...

... man and dog in perfect harmony ...

19 sleds, 109 dogs, we carve our way up into the frozen highlands of northern Norway  ...

  ... camping out, at night temperatures dropped to minus 20 and below ...

   the dogs, Alaskan Huskies, at night are chained on to a “stakeout”, a cable anchored into the snow... they are kept apart along the cable’s length

the dogs curl up in the snow, their body heat creating a hollow ... snow covers them over, further insulating them from the wind and the cold ...

fellow travellers skiing alongside the border with Finland ...

the design of the sled has seen little change over hundreds of years ...

... neither has the design of the dog ...!

... high jinks with the dogs ... the excitement builds as we prepare to harness the dogs to the sleds for another day’s fun ...

moving the dogs, you need to keep them on their hind legs ... let them onto all fours then you are likely to become a sled!

on the move ... gliding across one of the many frozen lakes we crossed in Sweden. The lakes are frozen over to a depth of up to 4 feet, between  October and May

a “fish camp” beside a frozen lake in northern Sweden ... miles from anywhere ...

at night we had another spectacular display of the northern lights, (this is not my picture but is very similar to what we saw)

cold and windy ... my nose eventually turned the same colour as my goggles! ...

Latte, my lead dog ... very bright ... sometimes you were lulled into thinking that you were in control!

Mocha and Latte ... co-pilot and pilot ...

Sara and Mollis  ... the second row ...

all of the dogs were fantastic, incredibly hardy, full of character ... this is Denali and Kodiak. (they were the 4x4s of my 6 dog team)

 our journey's end ... the Ice Hotel at Jukkasjarvi ... the Ice Hotel is built each year by teams of designers in November, lasts through to late spring, and has over 60 rooms!

... in the chapel at the Ice Hotel

... waiting for a drink at the Ice Bar ... on the rocks? ...

the (human) team ...