Two-day dogsledding tour in Svalbard – day 2

This article is part of the series “2023-03: Svalbard”.

Last night I dreamt that a heavy polar bear was lying on top of me. It had sneaked into our sleeping room. In reality a polar bear could never have approached the cabin unnoticed. We have seventeen polar bear guards outside: the sled dogs.

It is half past seven. I just started a fire because the inside temperature of the cabin in Tverrdalen has dropped to 5.7 °C, while it is -20 °C outside. It is the second day of Annika’s and my dogsledding tour in Svalbard and despite some stormy gusts of wind the weather looks quite promising.

Snow is blown around the dog sleds. Most dogs are still sleeping, some of them half snowed in. Snow will keep them warm, it is a good isolator. Not all dogs have slept outside, some have slept in wooden boxes to be protected against the wind.

I hurry to go in again, the glove livers were much too cold in the cold wind and my fingertips hurt. The next hours we are busy with taking breakfast, packing things, tidying the cabin, putting our clothes on and taking care of the dogs. While we are outside the wind is calming down and the sun shines on the snowy mountains round Tverrdalen.

We say goodbye to this wonderful place and start our journey back to the dog kennel in wonderful winter weather. Annika and I have put the bulky isolated anoraks into the sledge, they were too warm the day before and use our own windproof jackets. The fur-rimmed hoods are a good protection against wind and coldness.

We take a lunch break at the Scott Turner glacier, but before that we visit an impressive ice cave. I’ll write an own blog article about that later.

After a warm lunch break – Real Turmat outdoor food only needs hot water – we walk the dogs to the sledge and start our last stage of our dogsledding adventure.

It is not only the great weather, the beauty of the valley Bolterdalen and the mountains around, it’s the dogsledding itself that is great fun. After only a day Annika and I know how to work together, help the dogs, shift weight, brake and release the brakes again. Now we hardly have to help the dogs by pedalling or pushing the sledge. It goes downhills and the dogs know that they are on their way home where they will be rewarded with treats. So we glide effortlessly through the snowy landscape enjoying this extraordinary experience. And then we are back at the dog yard, were our sled dogs are eager to get loose and run around a bit, greet friends and wait for their goodies.

Annika and I get to know Foxi as well, the famous dog that led Tommy’s sledge on the Iditarod race and has also been at the North Pole. While Tommy and Adelheid are taking care of both dogs and other tourists Annika and I are sitting in the living room of the dog yard’s cabin and are chilling. Adelheid’s jeep needs a jump start – it does not like the cold – then she brings us back to town.

@ my colleague Y.: Thanks for the tip. Great tour. We enjoyed every minute!
@ Janne and Tommy: Thanks for the organisation of this extra tour!
@ Adelheid: Thanks for the guiding and cooking! It was a pleasure meeting you!
@ the dogs: Thanks for your hard work and your relaxed attitude 🐾!

Two-day dogsledding tour in Svalbard – day 1

This article is part of the series “2023-03: Svalbard”.

Annika and I are sitting in a car. The sky is mostly blue at temperatures round -20 °C. The side windows are freezing. Longyearbyen lies behind us.

The story has begun in the end of January. I have just learned, that I will work in Longyearbyen / Spitsbergen / Svalbard for a week in March. Annika and I decide to be on vacation there for another week. I ask my colleague Y., who has lived and guided there for several years for tipps what to do. He almost commands us to make a dog sledding tour with Arctic Husky Travellers with an overnight stay at the cabin in the valley Tverrdalen. Oh! It is fantastic! It is soo beautiful there! You have to do it! Soon we booked the tour.

Now Adelheid, our tour guide for the next two days drives us to the dog yard. When we arrive there we go into the house and get an introduction. Adelheid will take one sledge, Annika and I the other. We will both stand on the sledge and work together – steering, braking and helping the dogs when we drive uphill.

Tommy, one of the owners arrives and we get properly dressed. We get huge insulated bibs and enormous anoraks, that Tommy imported from the US. You cannot buy this type of dogsledding equipment in Europe. Then we get a hat, working gloves and mittens that do not look especially warm, but they definitely are. We slip into the warm Kamik boots and then everything goes quite fast.

I have never seen so relaxed dogs like those on Tommy’s dog yard. It is incredible. They are calm, they run around by themselves and then come back. It’s we humans that are busy to prepare everything. No time for photos. We get a last instruction: Take the first descend standing on the left runner and brake with the right foot. That’s important. Now in the final minutes the dogs start howling and off we go!

I do not have time to be nervous or frightened. Annika and I manage the first obstacle, Tommy accompanies us by snowmobile for a short while. We make some stops to check if everything is ok – thumbs up – and get another dog from Adelheids team. Tommy returns and we others continue alone. 17 dogs, two sledges, 3 humans.

Annika and I soon get into the flow and I cannot find words to describe the feeling of sliding through the snow covered valley Bolterdalen with exceptional views on the sunlit Arctic mountains. Annika is standing in front of me, I’m standing in the back. On a straight passage I dare to make some snapshots with my smartphone.

We both have brakes to slow down the dogs when we go downhills. But now we go uphills. We are too heavy for the dogs so I have to push. As soon as I do that the sledge becomes lighter and the dogs faster and I have to run while pushing. Although the snow is not deep I’m really out of breath and have to take short breaks to catch breath again. Fortunately it is only some shorter passages that are steep.

I don’t have a feeling for how long our trip was. Time doesn’t seem to matter while sliding through Svalbard’s Arctic landscape. We arrive at two a clock. While Annika and Adelheid are giving the dogs a snack and put them on the stake out lines I finally have the opportunity to take some photos. From the cabin, the polar bear safe food storage, the dogs and the hazy mountains around. Beautiful and extraordinary.

Being in the Scandinavian mountains in wintertime is nothing new to me, but this is like being in another world. I am standing there, just gazing until I finally do my job: helping the others with the dogs. But finally the dogs are all taken care of and most of them have been fallen asleep with the nose under the tail, because the wind gusts from the mountains are bitter cold.

Now it’s time for us to go inside, take a snack and relax a bit. We still sit there with woollen cap and jacket. It will take hours until the wood fired oven and the gas oven warm up the spacious but cosy living room up to round 15 °C.

Outdoors the full moon has risen above the eastern mountains and illuminates the scenery: A snowy place, 17 dogs and a warm and cosy cabin.

Annika and I go in “tourist mode”. While Adelheid is moving some dogs to protect them from the cold wind and starts preparing dinner we fire the sauna. First we have our bulky jackets on, but the sauna oven is strong and soon the sauna is hot. Then dinner time at 19:00. Adelheid cooked reindeer stew with rice – delicious. And – believe it or not – we even get a glass of white wine.

Now the dogs have rested enough to get their well-deserved dinner. There are not enough bowls for them all, but that does not matter. Sled dogs can be fast eaters and while we portion the food the first ones already have finished their meal.

The dogs are dozing and we are chilling in the cabin. I am reading “Foxi – sledehunden ingen ville ha”, a book about one of Tommi’s dogs. First unwanted it became an outstanding lead dog in a Iditarod race and was at the North Pole, too.

Then it’s bedtime for us as well. It does not take long until I fell aslee…

z-z-z…

Visiting the “Vindelälvsdraget”

Yesterday Annika and I went to Vännäsby , 25 km away from Umeå, to view the 30th Vindelälvsdraget which is the world biggest draught dog relay according to the organisers. It started in Ammarnäs in the Swedish mountains on Thursday and ended just in Vännasby on Sunday. That’s a distance of 381 km in three and a half days.

Some of the competitors used a sledge pulled by four to six dogs, but most of them skated on skis and had one or two dogs dragging (more or less). They came along on the frozen river Vindelälven, turned into the river Umeåälven, which they had to leave right after the bridge. Some of the teams managed it perfectly while others had to shout höger! (right) to the dogs several times until they obeyed. The river bank is quite steep and was a real challenge for the discipline of the dogs. One of them just rolled in the snow while the skier tried not to slip and fall, while some others were shortly distracted by the smell of the grilled sausage by the trail. However all teams managed to come up where there were only some 100 metres left to the finishing line.

The speaker at the finishing line was great. His talk was so “adagio”, laid back and completely free of any stress. I really enjoyed his almost zen-like moderation which was the total opposite of the normal sport presenters stressful reporting attitude. My kudos!

Some photos:

Links: Website / Information pdf (both in Swedish)

4×4 winter impressions of Kirkenes

This article is part of the series “2017-02: Northern Norway”.

Kirkenes – the harbour

While Annika and our friends in Kirkenes enjoyed their breakfast in the Hotel Thon I took a short promenade along the Johan Knudtzens gata to take some pictures. Already the view from the hotel terrace over the fjord is quite impressive and shows the beauties of the arctic nature while the harbour shows the more practical sides of living here: fishing, both commercially and just for fun.

A hike onto the top of the Lyngberget

After the breakfast we took the car to Jakobsnes and a bit further to take a promenade up the mountain Lyngberget, which lies on the other side of the Bøkfjorden. Here you can have a wide view over the whole town of Kirkenes – at least as long it doesn’t snow, as it did on our way back. I just love these wintry landscapes where you have views over fjell and fjord, but the wind was quite chilly and soon we looked like the participants of an arctic expedition.

The Huskies of the Kirkenes Snowhotel

Today we played tourists and visited the Kirkenes Snowhotel, which is just some hundred metres away. The Snowhotel has 180 Huskies including the seniors plus 30 puppies. The huskies are like we humans – some are working, some are resting, some are curious and some are shy. But they are all very kind and friendly.

Inside the Kirkenes Snowhotel

I slept in tents, in igloos and outside in wintertime. I even slept in the Kirkenes Snowhotel two years ago. This time Annika and I enjoy sleeping in the inside of our friends house (Thank you for your great hospitality, Christine and Ørjan) but gave the Snowhotel a visit. And it was worth it – especially the lounge with it carved ice blocks is very impressive.

Tomorrow we’ll leave this fine place, take the car to Vardø in the North (yes, that’s still possible!) and take the Hurtigruten from there to our next destination.

Kirkenes: A night in the snow hotel

This is perhaps the most special place of the whole Nordkalotten 2015 journey to write my blog: On the bed in the room of the snow hotel. Behind me a warm sleeping bag, beside me a snow relief of husky dogs running.

But its a perfect match to my afternoon, where my friend had a half day of and I got a wonderful private dog sledding tour. Parts of the trail where prepared perfectly, because they were part of the Finnmarksløpet – a 1000 km dog race from Alta to Kirkenes and back again that happens right now. First I sat and enjoyed gliding through the landscape effortlessly, but on the flat sea ice of the Langfjorden I could stand on the sledges blades and steer the dogs by myself – a really easy terrain for beginners like me – and I have to admit that this is much more fun than just sitting.

A great two hour tour, thank you, C.! The only disadvantage as a photographer, most of the time you see bums and tails, but if you ignore this, it’s great fun!

Later on we got a three course dinner which was very good. To be honest, that was almost the main reason, why I booked the snow hotel night. I’ve slept in igloos before, but of course not in such a huge one with a three course dinner before.

This night is a good end of my journey. Tomorrow I’ll head home. I’m stuffed with sensations and impressions and I’m longing home. But before I went into my room, I even got some polar light again after a quite long time of abstinence.

Now I have to close, the laptop runs out of battery and I start getting cold.

Good night!

 

Jokkmokks marknad

Day 22 – the winter market in Jokkmokk

The first weekend in February is the traditional date for the winter market in Jokkmokk – the Jokkmokks marknad – that took place the 410th time this year. Quite a long history – the first market, long before Jokkmokk exists, was 1605.

I’ve been in Jokkmokk on Thursday, which is the quietest day. From Murjek, where I’m just now, it’s round an hour car drive to Jokkmokk. I arrived 9:00, quite early. Most marketers just started to unfold their market stalls or to unpack their goods. I went down to the lake where the dog sledging was prepared. Most of the dogs were still in their stables in the car trailer, but they longed to come out and to run. But it was only a matter of time until ten dogs where attached to the sledge and the first tourists could take a small tour over the lake.

Tore Sankari, FinlandI went back to the market and met Tore Sankari, one of the marketers that I already met in Byske some months ago. He has been trading fur and many other goods for more than 45 years. But he told me, that the market is smaller than usual this year. Some of the long-established marketers didn’t come. And I could see as well, that some of the streets, packed with stalls some years ago where empty this year.

I talked to some marketers. Many of them are old men, travelling around, buying and selling goods as fur products, knives, warm clothes and things for everyday life. I guess some of them had stopped their businesses, some other will do it in the next years. Will there be a younger generation to follow or will this half-nomadic lifestyle extinct? I don’t have an answer.

What is traded on the Jokkmokks market? I would divide it in three parts:

  • Traditional goods, Swedish and Samian. Shoes made of reindeer skin, woolen Lovikka mittens, fur products, knifes.
  • Modern everyday goods. Sweets, toys, fishing equipment, tractors.
  • Art handicrafts. Samian fashion, jewellery, paintings, thinks made of birch root and bark.

But have a look by yourself. Just some examples:

At two o’clock i went to the reindeer race. It’s always fun to see the reindeers galloping drawing a sledge with a man or woman cheering their draught animal.

Seven hours after arrival I left the winter market and drove back. Actually I thought about visiting the market twice but I left it with the impression, that I have seen all. Next day I wanted to be out in the nature again. And that’s what I did.