How many layers of clothes can you put on before you get a heat-stroke? Quite a bit as I experienced today in my room of Hotel K5 in Levi (Lapland). Two T-Shirts as underwear, one sport-sweater, one pull-over from wool, one wind-breaker from Goretex plus finally the thick yellow winter anorak. So far only for the upper part of the body before you start to sweat anywhere inside which makes you run outside. Yet inside is different from outside, and outside it had minus -28 degrees Celsius for where we were going and where this sort of clothing was just right to feel comfortable.
On a safari through the arctic snow, standing on a sledge, being part of a "team", one driver per sledge and 4 to 6 six hyper-energetic huskies in the front. Before we started, I took a little video in the kennel of our tour organizer from Snow Riders. The huskies had been resting three days and couldn't wait till the rope holding the sledge was released from the tree.
Being part of the team as the driver is not really difficult, but it requires more than just standing passively on the back. The brake is very important, especially in the beginning when the dogs have the highest power, but also the task requires to balance the vehicle gently into the curve. These amazing and overly friendly creatures are doing what they love most: running. While they run, they occasionally also shit, pee and yes, it stinks. But for the first time – in spite of being an urban child who was annoyed when I stepped into dog shit – I felt it was totally normal. By contrast, I owed the animals respect for their apparently endless stamina and their discipline to carry on to the right direction.
A view I will never forget in my life appeared when we left the snow-covered woods onto a plane where the flat hanging sun at high noon was showing its face.
Juha Laine, the owner of Snow Riders (in the picture above) is a big Fin with a big heart. There is nothing more beautiful than interacting with people who love doing what they do, and Juha is exactly such a person. He adores his dogs, each of his 42 in the kennel has a name and he know each and every one's character, strengths and weaknesses which determines how he puts a team together.
Ultimately, there is a hierarchy among the dogs where "leaders" emerge who are not shy to run in front of the other dogs of the "class" and who get therefore attached to the very top. When the team goes the same route, the dogs know from the smell into which direction to go without major commands. And not to forget, just how beautiful they are:
Halfway of our 22 km tour we stopped at a hut where Juha lit a fire inside where we might have brought the temperature to something above zero, drank hot chocolate and ate Finburgers which were warmed in aluminum at the right edge the open fire.
Driving back to the kennel with some experience on the sledge was a relatively easy ride, especially as it went downhill and I had to step slightly on the brake to keep a reasonable pace. In the kennel itself, there was a female husky (="a bitch") which had just two weeks ago given birth to six puppies. Tiny and cute, they had just opened their eyes a few days ago and one could hardly believe that in half a year they would start training to become such relentless runners under hefty conditions. (Unfortunately due to the cold, the batteries of both my cameras were completely depleted, so unfortunately no pics of the dog-babies).
The entire picture set of the stay in Lapland so far is here (more to come) and when you plan your trip to Lapland, don't miss out on a husky tour with Snow Riders and Juha; promised that it will be a once-in-a-lifetime-experience.
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