In retrospect the plan for the dogsledding tour was bit too ambitious,
However, as a guideline (as opposed to a fixed plan), it turned out to be just right.
We (kind of) wanted to do the second half of the Finnmarksløpet.
The Finnmarksløpet is the biggest dogsledding event outside of North America.
It's a race covering a distance of 1200 kilometers.
And, even though the name might be misleading, it's in Norway, not in Finland. (It is named after the Finnmark county in Norway.)
Also, it is technically not one race, but three. The FL-1200 (the long race), the FL-600 (covering, not surprisingly, 600 km) and the FL-junior for younger mushers, over 200 kilometers.
But, for the moment, the relevant one is the FL-1200.
It runs from Alta to Kirkenes and back again.
The trail is not fully symmetrical.
On the way to Kirkenes, the trail takes a slightly longer route from Jotka to Šuoššjávri than on the way back. And while the route from Neiden to Kirkenes is fairly direct, there is a long detour through the Øvre Pasvik national park on the way back.
Instead, we picked the shorter routes for each segment, so the trail from Kirkenes to Alta would not quite be 600 km (half of the FL-1200), but around 490 kilometers.
The reason for following the Finnmarksløpet trail was easy - it was the Finnmarksløpet.
The race started two weeks before our tour, with most participants going on the section from Kirkenes to Alta about a week before we would be going.
In all likelihood, we would still have a well-marked, prepared and recently used trail to follow.
The tour was scheduled for 10 days on the sled, so we aimed to cover about 50 km per day.
It seemed like an ambitious, but reasonable strategy.
As one of the frustrations with the company I've been with for the last three years was that there wasn't enough dog sledding during the day (we averaged slightly more than 30 km per day). Longer daily distances and more time on the sled were welcome.
The tour plan seemed sensible and we tried (and partly managed) to follow it, but it also fell apart almost immediately.
First of all, we were not going to start from Kirkenes.
I don't remember whether the reason for that was already the snow situation around Alta or whether there was some other reason. But I already knew that we would be starting from Neiden, which is a long day by dogsled west from Kirkenes.
The updated plan was now to take a taxi from Kirkenes to Neiden and meet Ben (the owner of the dogsledding company), Nina (the dog handler) and the dogs there. (And shaving about 70 km from our dogsledding distance.)
Their intention was to arrive there around noon, so we could unload the dogs and the sleds and go for a short 'test run' in the afternoon to sort out potential issues and get acquainted with the dogs and the procedures, before starting our way to Alta the next day.
But the dogsledding company isn't actually located in Alta, but about 70 km further down along a fjord (or two fjords - the Altafjord and the Langfjord). And there is only one road from there to Alta, which runs right along the coast, with some steep mountains on the side (not unusual for Norwegian fjords). And after some snowfall, there had been avalanches. I am not sure whether there were avalanches that blocked the road or a high risk of avalanches with a road closure as a precaution. But in any case, the road was closed. Ben couldn't bring the dogs.
He assumed that the road would be re-opened on the day we were planning to start dog sledding, but he wouldn't know until the morning. It's a seven-hour drive to Neiden. Which meant that he wouldn't arrive in Neiden until the late afternoon. (Especially as you can't simply put 36 dogs in a trailer and drive for seven hours. At some point you need to stop and let them out for a while, which makes the trip even longer.)
So our 'test run' was essentially cancelled and we would directly start for Alta the next morning.
Which we didn't.
The first part of the route would have taken us across some mountain plateau, where we would have camped two or three nights in tents before reaching a cabin in Levajok, where we would have a rest day.
There was a severe storm warning for most of northern Norway for the following night. Additionally, there was a storm warning for the mountains for the next couple of days.
Heading out the next day and weathering the storm in tents, only to head up the mountain plateau and dogsled and camp in more stormy weather didn't seem like a good idea.
The new plan was now to do the 'test run' the next morning, while the weather was still fine. And return to Neiden, were we were staying in proper cabins (and had a restaurant nearby).
Ben, Nina and the dogs arrived around 5 pm. And we started unloading.
It took a while, but then everything was neatly set up.
The area obviously had been used during the Finnmarksløpet as a dog resting place as well, as there were still bits of straw visible in the snow.
While we were feeding the dogs, Ben had another issue to address. During the trip, a ball bearing on the trailer's axle had broken and he needed to take the trailer somewhere for repairs. (I think it needed to go for repairs to Finland. Which sounds odd, but Neiden is only five kilometers from the Finnish border. It's a long way to the next larger settlement, however)
For us that meant that we had a bit of time to get to know 'our' teams.
'Mine' was the one on the lower left. Half of the dogs in the team were named after characters from the Simpsons.
I had Bart, Maggie and Milhouse. (There was also a Homer around, but he was in Norbert's team.)
And, as non-Simpsons related dogs, I also had Cargo, Møller and Polo.
Most of them were born in 2022, which makes them two or three years old (the Simpsons were born in February, so they already had their birthday by the time of the trip, but Cargo and Møller were born in August, so they were still two years old). The veteran in the team was Polo, who was born in August 2019, so she's five years old.
And as I'm listing names, there should probably be a mention of the other two humans on the trip, Constanze and Norbert. (Though I won't list their ages.)
I've met Constanze on a dogsledding trip in the Yukon in 2012 and we've been on a few dogsledding trips together since then. I didn't know Norbert, who is from Austria and has done previous dog sledding trips with Ben. He knew more about the dogs and the ways Ben runs his tours than we did.
But back to the dogs...
The most noticeable dog on the team was doubtlessly Maggie.
She has this rather strange appearance, where she can sometimes look like the cutest dog in the kennel, but also can look like a Bond villain, cold, calculating and menacing.
And in the kennel, she's among the most vocal dogs, making sure that nobody forgets that she's there.
She also likes belly rubs. A lot.
Maggie is also surprisingly strong. She's one of the smaller dogs, so when Ben suggested I should occasionally use her as a wheel dog (the ones right in front of the sled, doing most of the pulling), I thought he was joking. But she did well in that position.
Usually, she was running side by side with Milhouse, who is reliable, but comes across as a bit grumpy.
Generally a reliable dog, but bad news for any vegetation nearby.
And with a distinct dislike of dogs that don't belong to his horde.
We went met a couple of other dogsledders along the way, and Milhouse always veered over towards their teams and started barking agressively at them.
So every time we encountered another sled, I was going "...on by, on by, on by, MILHOUSE NO!, on by...". (I don't even know whether the dogs know "on by" as a command (and if they did, they ignored me anyway), but it seemed proper to say it.).
My lead dogs were Polo and Bart.
Bart can, like Maggie, sometimes look a bit mean. If you take a look at the teams, Bart is the dog that appears most like he's looking for a fight. But Bart is actually a nice dog and mostly a competent lead.
Although there was one nervous moment when we went past a wooden post on the trail and Polo was trying to pass on the left side and, about three meters before the pole, Bart decided that going to the right might be nicer. I was already moving my foot to the brake to stomp down heavily, but about a meter before the pole, Bart decided that it might be a better idea to pass on the same side as Polo.
Except for that, Bart was reliable.
Although, as a lead dog, Polo was, without doubt, more experienced and usually more alert.
This showed especially when Ben, on the lead sled, had moved slightly off the obvious trail (usually because there was a wet patch when crossing a lake and it's better when the dogs run over snow, even if it's soft and a bit deeper, than making them run through water and getting wet legs). If the lead dog is a bit bored and doesn't pay attention, it will follow the obvious trail and lead the team and the sled straight through the wet or icy section. A better sled dog will pay attention to the sled in front of it, even if it's a bit ahead, and follow the trail of that sled (this includes on which side to go around a wooden pole on the trail).
Except for two patches of water that we went through when we didn't need to, Polo did a good job. Which was especially helpful on the next to last day when it was snowing and I couldn't see the trail or Ben's sled ahead of me. And I had to hope that Polo knew where to go, as I hadn't a clue. And Polo did well there.
My wheel dogs (for most of the time) were two brothers, Cargo and Møller.
Møller is probably the dog in 'my' team that looks least like you expect a sled dog to look.
He looks more like some German/Dutch Shepherd mix that accidentally stumbled into the kennel.
Though Møller wasn't by far the oddest sled dog around. From some distance, Maggie also looks a bit too small for being a sled dog. But at least, as for the other Simpson-themed dogs, she has these blue eyes that make her recognizably a husky.
However, Zoe (not in my team) looked completely out of place.
With the long hair around her head, she looked like some sort of Spitz to me.
(Looks don't count for much in dogsledding, but some dogs still seem a bit unusual.)
I didn't get any good pictures of that (and most of the 'decoration' had gone when we were feeding), but we spent one night at a place where there was some ground that was not covered with snow. And in the morning Zoe had a fair number of twigs and other plant bits stuck in her long fur, especially around the face, which made her look a bit hippie-ish.
(To my surprise, I found, when I looked up "Spitz", that it isn't a specific dog breed. Like "Alaskan husky", it's more a general 'catch all' for dogs that have specific features (functional in Alaskan Huskies, appearance in Spitz dogs). And it turns out that Huskies in general are considered part of the Spitz family anyway. (And there's a breed called Swedish Lapphund that looks similar to Zoe and is also considered a Spitz. So, after all, despite initial looks, Zoe fits well into a group of sled dogs. And her performance as a sled dog is, as far as I've seen, good as well.)
Back to Møller, who was probably the most reliable dog in the group. Happy to see people, pulling consistently, staying on his side of the gangline and eating without complaints.
Which is great for dog sledding, but always a bit of an issue when writing about a dog.
Dogs like Møller, who do their work properly are like machine parts. As long as the function, you forget about them. Quirky dogs are more annoying for the actual sledding, but at least you remember the quirks.
And that brings us to the last dog, his brother Cargo, who does have a number of quirks.
I'm not talking about the name. 'Cargo' sounds more like he should be on the sled than in front of it. I don't know why he's called that way. Ben didn't know either, as the dog is from another kennel. (Also, of course, that's not the dog's fault.)
The main issue is that Cargo likes to look at the person behind the dog sled sometimes. A sled dog is supposed to look forward. In some strange situations, dogs might look back at the dog sled driver. Usually when the driver does something stupid and the dogs want to make sure that everything is alright. But not while they are running normally.
But Cargo not only looks back for a quick peek, he does that `for some time. Which also means that he's running slightly 'sideways' and not pulling on the sled as much as he could.
Also, Cargo really likes to run on the left side, but does not know that.
Sometimes dogs have a preferred side. Which is no problem (unless you have two dogs side by side, who prefer the same side), as you put the dog on that side and everyone is happy.
I tried to hook up Cargo on the left side and Møller on the ride side. And by the time we got going, both dogs had switched sides.
Sometime later, during the run, Cargo was on the left side of the gangline, pushing Møller farther out to the left. While that works and both dogs were (kind of) happy with that, it also means that Møller was off to the side and not pulling as efficiently as he could (force distribution parallelograms and all that...)
Oddly enough, during a short stop, the dogs did switch sides on their own (to the positions that I had put them in the morning) and for the rest of the day everything (except for the occasional glance back) worked fine.
While Cargo prefers to run left, it also seems that he likes to be hooked up on the right in the morning.
Lovely dog, but quirky.
(And, by now, it seems that he's no longer part of the group. Which might be my fault. It's about a month after the tour and I had looked on their web page for information about the dogs (as, for example, I didn't know their ages). And I did look up Cargo a couple of days ago. But today, I can't find him any more on the list of dogs. The page with his description returns an '404 Not found'. As Ben had asked me after the trip whether Cargo still looked back at the dog driver and I confirmed that, Ben said (slightly ominously) that I had sealed Cargo's destiny with that. So it might have been my assessment that caused Cargo to be removed from the kennel. Which probably means that I should keep my mouth shut in the future.) (Update: I talked to Ben a while later and he confirmed that Cargo had been sold at the end of the season.)
The first day was (mostly) a fun run.
We had a short 20 km run with overcast skies, mostly along a river and flat areas.
Not the best weather and a bit of snow coming down, but no severe winds or anything nasty.
Essentially a good run to get reacquainted with dog sledding and the equipment.
Fortunately, nobody had any real issues.
Even though I had the distinct impression that Ben was putting us to the test.
At one point, we turned off the river and went up a street that went through the little settlement of Bøknes, past a few houses and then made a turn over a snowbank and back down to the river again.
That can be a bit tricky (especially turning along a banked surface can lead to sleds falling over, as well as going down a decline with a subsequent turn onto a river). It felt more like a test than a reasonable route to take.
It's not that I am complaining. Ben didn't know me or Constanze, so it makes sense if he wanted to see whether we're properly in control of our sleds or likely to do something stupid.
In any case, everyone managed without problems.
We went for about 45 minutes or so, until we reached a lake called Heaikkagoahtejávri (a place that makes me happy that this is a written log and not a podcast, so I don't need to pronounce it) and turned back towards Neiden.
The weather deteriorated a bit during the run and we were probably all happy that we were heading back to the cabin at Neiden and not heading on and having to set up tents somewhere on the plain that night.
Next morning it was finally time to head out for real.
The weather report was good as far as the lower regions went, but there were still storm warnings for the next days for the mountain plateau.
The day started out with clear blue skies.
For the first 10 kilometers we followed the track we used the previous day (excluding the little loop through Bøknes).
The terrain became slightly trickier after that. But not much.
We were still mostly going along lakes, with only some minor uphill sections, but the wind had been strong here and the trail was often little more than a continuous line of snow among patches of bare ice.
The sky turned grey as well during the day.
After about five hours and 55 km of dog sledding, we set up camp.
It felt really good having a 'proper' day of dogsledding again.
I hadn't gone more than 50 km a day since 2020 and the last time I went more than the 55 km we did now was in 2018.
We stopped near a lake (to have a water supply) and tried to figure out the tents.
Constanze and I had tents to ourselves, while Norbert shared the big tent with Ben and Nina.
Luckily, there wasn't much wind when and where we had stopped, so we could set everything up under calm conditions and didn't need to set up the tents at the same time as trying to keep them from being blown away. (On my very first dogsledding vacation, way back in 2009, we had to set up tents on a windy day, which isn't that difficult, but it's not something you do not want to do with a tent you don't know yet.)
As a bonus, the clouds started to open up and we had some nice sunlight in the evening.
The sky cleared up even more during the night. Which was nice, as this made it possible to see some impressive northern lights.
(At this point, a big thanks to Norbert for some of the pictures. I didn't put much effort in it and balanced an action cam on a sled handle and vaguely pointed it in the right direction to have some snapshots, before heading for my sleeping bag. Norbert took northern lights photography much more seriously and stayed out longer and experimented more with different exposures, so his pictures look a lot better than mine.)
Next morning, the skies were cloudy again.
Originally, we would have headed to the base of a mountain plateau, driving onto the plateau the next day and camp there, before heading to the cabins at Levajok, where a rest day was planned.
We would have easily made it to the base of the mountain. (I am sure of that, as, for about half of the way, we went the same route. And the other half would have been a simple drive along a river. Which we did anyway, sort of, but the other way.)
But there was still a storm warning for that plateau. (To put that into perspective: most mountains there are about 500 meters tall. And we weren't going to head for the peaks in any case. So it's not the Alps up there. The issue wasn't altitude, but that we had no shelter from the storm. The critical word here is plateau, not mountain.) And after the first 'proper' day of dogsledding, four dogs had turned out not to be as fit as they should have been. No serious injuries or anything like that, but running uphill, with dogs that already didn't do well, didn't seem like a good idea.
Hence: Change of plan!
Instead of heading for the base of the mountains, where we would be far away from anything, we headed for Masjok, which was downriver from the trail. Ben knew a musher who lives there and we could camp behind his house. Which would be in the 'lowlands' anyway, but also protected from the wind by a small forest and some buildings.
It also was next to a road. And it was possible to organize transport for the sleds, dogs and humans from there.
But first we had to get there.
Technically, most of it wasn't difficult. (Except when we met a couple of reindeer along the way and a few dogs wanted to follow them instead of the sled ahead.)
But the environment was unusual. At least compared to what I have seen when dogsledding. Probably not unusual for a tundra.
In most places I've been when dogsledding, there are either some trees around (often birches) or there is no visible vegetation at all (there are presumably mosses, but they usually are under the snow).
But here we had neither.
For a long stretch, the place looked some stubs of semi-dead shrubbery.
It's possibly that a lot of places I've been to look like this, but there always had been too much snow to notice. But it still felt like a strange scenery to be in.
On long sections the bare ground was visible. I'm not sure whether there hadn't been much snow to begin with or whether the storm had blown most of it away (presumably the latter). But it's an odd place for dogsledding. However, the trail itself was useable. The Finnmarksløpet and probably also a few snowmobiles had compacted the snow and kept it in place.
(And guess who's the dog who is not looking where he is supposed to look...)
The most difficult part of the whole trip came when we tried to turn onto the river.
There's a road running in parallel to Tana river. And we needed to get on the other side of the road by going under a bridge.
There was a somewhat steepish descent to the side river (the Roussajohka), which the bridge crosses. (It doesn't look like much on the picture, but it's surprisingly hard to keep the sled under control.) And that descent is followed by a turn onto icy ground.
A place where things can go unpleasantly wrong.
Ben decided to play it safe and secured his sled a short distance ahead and then came back to slowly 'walk' our lead dogs down onto the river.
Once there, it was easy going for a while (going along a wide river), but then it started to snow and became a bit foggy, so the pictures don't show much.
The trail got interesting again when we got close to Masjok, as we needed to get to the place where we would be staying overnight from the landside (and not directly from the river). We needed to drive up a slightly serpentine path, which feels strange on a dog sled (as you really don't want to cut a corner to tightly and roll down the hill). Nobody had any problems with this, though.
On the way there, we also did a small detour through the village of Tana bru, which confused me for a moment. The trail could have easily followed the river. There didn't seem to be any point to the detour into town.
But I was thinking with the wrong kind of transport vehicle. The Finnmarksløpet trail would have gone upriver after we had passed under the bridge. As we were heading downriver, this wasn't really a common dogsledding trail anymore. It was mostly a snowmobile trail. And the detour through Tana bru went past the petrol station. Useful if you are on a snowmobile - not so much on a dog sled.
In any case, we arrived in Masjok in the late afternoon and set up the tents in somebodies back yard. (The front yard was used for their own sled dog kennel.)
As a place to camp, it was perfect.
We were sheltered from the wind, had access to tap water for the dogs and, as an extra luxury, we were allowed to use their indoor toilet.
The owners were very helpful and polite.
Of course, you are going to help fellow mushers.
But it's still a strange situation, where you need to call up someone in the morning and tell them "I'm in the area with three dozen dogs, five sleds, three clients and would like to camp behind your house. And, by the way, if you can sort out transport for all of us for the next day, that would be appreciated."
And after imposing ourselves on their time and resources, they came out to our tents and brought us cake. Lovely.
They had a strange arrangement where they have 'home office' for emergency services.
The couple living there are the local police officer and the emergency doctor. (I don't remember who had which job.) And during corona, they started to work from home.
And that continued to make sense, especially for the emergency service.
If you need an ambulance, you don't really care where it is coming from.
So, they had the ambulance car parked directly in front of their house. If there had been any medical emergency, they could have jumped right into the car, driven to wherever help is needed and then, potentially, could have brought someone to the next hospital. It is a sensible arrangement. If there's no actual emergency, there's no need to sit around and wait. You might as well do useful things at home.
But the idea of doing emergency services from home never had occurred to me.
Next morning, we put the sleds on a flatbed trailer and the dogs into someone's dog trailer.
Thirty-six dogs are a lot and most mushers don't have a trailer large enough for them. Such large trailers only make sense for dogsledding companies, but individual mushers don't need to transport that many dogs.
Due to that, a few of the dogs got to ride the 'party bus' in the back of the van.
We were ready to move and drove around the mountains to Levajok.
At Levajok we would rejoin the Finnmarksløpet trail two days later.
Originally, we would have had a rest day here in the middle of the trip.
Due to the changed plans, we were now here a day earlier than intended. But as the place was nearly deserted, moving the date wasn't an issue.
While we were resting at the cabins there, Ben had two long days ahead. He would be driving all the way to Alta (and beyond, to where the kennel is) and back. Roughly a five hour drive each way.
He would bring the four dogs that weren't fit enough to continue back to the kennel and bring back four fresh dogs. Three of his dogs and one from another musher, named Espen.
And he would bring a replacement sled bag as well. (A zipper on my sled bag was broken. Two teeth of the zipper were missing. And when I opened the zipper beyond that point, the zipper slider came off. There were a number of extra straps around, so we could 'emergency close' the sled bag. But things mighty have fallen out. Or snow might have gotten in. It was better to get another sled bag.)
I think it was Norbert who mentioned that we were close to the Finnish border.
Looking at the map, I noticed that the border was very close indeed.
For roughly 130 km, the Karasjohka river (which later becomes the Tana river) is the border between Norway and Finland, so we only needed to cross the middle of the river to visit Finland.
That this is roughly were the snowmobile trails are located is coincidence. It's not as if they are specifically marking the border or running border patrols.
But in some cases, it might lead to interesting (well, if you're pedantic, like to argue and have nothing better to do) problems.
For example, the maximum speed for snowmobiles in Norway is 70 km/h, while in Finland it is 80 km/h. So, if you're rushing along the snowmobile trail at 80 km/h, are you speeding or not?
Is the assumption that you are driving on the right side of the trail? So if you are going 80 km/h upriver, you are on the Norwegian side and are speeding and get a fine? If you go downriver at the same speed, you're driving in Finland and everything is fine?
I assume that in real life, nobody cares about stuff like that.
After the rest day (for us) Ben had brought back four replacement dogs and a replacement sled bag, so we were ready to head out again.
At that point, we were planning to stay in tents for the next four nights, so for the last five days we would be 'out there' on our own.
From here on, Nina had recent experience with the trail we were about to follow.
She had participated in the Finnmarksløpet 600 a week earlier. The race is the 'smaller sibling' of the Finnmarksløpet 1200, running 'only' 600 km instead of 1200 km. In a sense, it's the more popular of the two races, at least among the participants. It has about twice the number of participants and twice the number of finishers.
That seems to be mainly since it is more accessable to enthusiastic amateurs. It requires less dogs to enter (8 instead of 14) and can probably be done by anyone reasonably fit and good at dogsledding. (While the full 1200 km race probably means that you hardly do anything else for the half year before the race than train and prepare for it.)
But even though it's 'only' 600 km, that's for most participants about 150 km per day, which means that it's almost three times the daily distance we were covering on this trip. Nina mentioned that the thing that surprised her most about the race was how utterly exhausting it was.
In any case, the 600 km race is not run quite on the same trail as the 1200 km race. It's neither going 600 km down the trail and stopping there (which would be logistically challenging, as you need the infrastructure to transport everything back), nor is it going 300 km and then turning around and running back the same way (the way the 1200 km race does for a large part of it).
The route for the 600 km race goes to Levajok in a somewhat roundabout way (making a big detour to Kautokeino and back, which isn't part of the 1200 km race. It also goes from Karasjok, on a route that's not along the river, but overland, to Levajok, before going (mostly) along the Finnmarksløpet 1200 trail back to Alta.
That meant that Nina knew the trail from Levajok back to Alta well, as she had driven that about a week earlier, through probably a lot of it at night and more tired.
The first day after the rest day was a really relaxed day of dog sledding.
The only slightly tricky bit was getting started, as we needed to go down a small decline down to the river - with rested and eager dogs in front of the sleds. But that provided no problems.
The rest of the day we were going up Karasjohka river. A wide river, flat terrain, stable ice, thin layer of snow, well used trail. About as easy as dogsledding gets.
During the day we went in and out of Finland about a dozen times.
In the morning, the sky was still mostly overcast.
But later the skies cleared up and it became a sunny day.
It even got warm enough that I could do some dogsledding wearing a t-shirt.
That was also one of the days where Maggie and Milhouse where the wheel dogs, with Møller and Cargo running in the middle. (Cargo being suspiciously noticeable by running slightly sideward.)
In the evening, we camped right on the river.
According to the GPS, we were technically spending the night in Finland. (I was about to write 'on Finnish soil', but as we were on a river, that didn't seem to fit.)
It might be worth mentioning that the way the dogs were placed for the night was unsusual.
I've only seen one other dog sledding company do it like this.
In most cases, the stake-out lines (to which the dogs are attached overnight) are placed the same way as the dogs run during the day - one sled after the other.
For example, here and here are the dogs on their stake-out-lines from two years earlier. And it's similar here in 2009 or here in 2013.
While here we were 'parking' the teams side-by-side (which we, for example, also had done in 2017).
Keeping all the dogs in on big line makes some things easier.
If some dogs don't like each other, you can put them in different teams (which you would do in any case) and you don't risk them ending up close to each other during the night.
And it's much easier to stop at the end of the day. The front sled simply stops and all other sleds stop with a bit of distance (usually about twice the current team length, as stake-out lines mostly have attachment points for each individual dog, while the dogs run in pairs on the gangline). You put out the stake-out lines, unharness and move the dogs and you are done. (Depending on the outfit, the weather and the fur of the dogs, you may add straw and dog blankets.)
In the morning, you reverse the process. And when all dogs are back to the gangline, you have a convenient distance between all the sleds. The lead sled continues on the trail it was on the previous evening and everyone follows.
With the dog teams side-by-side, things are more complicated. As the dogs won't 'park themselves' properly (and they ignore directional commands from the clients), the tour guide (i.e., Ben) needs to park his dogs (which he can do, as his dogs will follow his commands). He then goes to the place where he wants the lead dogs of the next team to be. From there, he calls the dogs. (At least usually. in some cases, especially when the dogs are likely to run diagonally to where he is standing instead of doing proper 'parallel parking', he might go to the lead dogs and walk with them.)
And in the morning, the start needs more attention (and possibly skills) by the clients. Generally, all teams head towards the lead team. Which might get in the way of other teams.
To illustrate, here's an example of the set-up on the start in Neiden.
Ben had the team on the right. Then there were the three client teams in the middle and Nina's team on the left.
When Ben starts straight out and his sled is at the lower end of the light green line, all other teams will try to position themselves to point toward the point where Ben's sled is.
Which means that (if everything goes well and the dogs are equally alert), the second sled to start will have to take care not to run over the lead dogs of the third team, which, by then, are standing in the path.
And that's the best case. If things go wrong (for example, the dogs of the third sled are more enthusiastic that morning than the ones on the second sled), some dogs might cross over the ganglines of other teams, which means that the clients need to secure their sleds and untangle the lines.
Also, if a sled isn't properly secured and a team starts out of order, things get really messy.
That's assuming that Ben is driving straight ahead (or 'down' in the picture above).
On the second day, he turned to the right (from his view, to the lower left of the image). So all 'dog lines' started to swivel around and (as they are fond to say on news programes and press conferences when they don't have a clue what's going on) it becomes a 'dynamic situation'.
Generally, that works out fine (we didn't have any real problems on any of the starts), but it requires that the clients pay attention and have an idea of what they are and should be doing.
The advantage of parallel parking of the dogs is that the dogs like it more (dogs generally like to be a horde and see each other, instead of being strung up like pearls on a string), it;s easier to find a sheltered place on windy days. (Admittedly not an issue here, as we were camping on flat, open ground and the wind protection would have been the same, however the dogs would have been parked. But, for example, on the 2020 tour, we had brought "windscreens" to shelter the dogs (the white walls to the left and right of the dogs on this picture here) and that's nearly impossible to do if you have all the dogs in one long line.)
And the other advantage is that distances are much shorter.
That is especially noticeable during feeding (it's a long way to the lead dog of the first team, if you have five teams parked in a row), but also if something is needed from a sled. And if you are at a place with soft, deep snow, the walk is even harder.
Here the sleds were close to each other and it was easy to get to all the dogs.
I'm not sure whether this is a result of that or coincidental, but feeding the dogs was (intentionally) a bit random.
There are different approaches to feeding.
You put the food and dog bowls somewhere (usually near the middle of the line, but sometimes to one of the ends, depending on space available) fill the bowls and start feeding on one end.
Sometimes you start at the front, work your way back to where the food is and then start at the back for the rest. Or you start in the middle, work your way out to one end and then to the other. Or you feed from the front and then feed towards the end.
There are all sorts of rationalizations for that. One idea is that you should always give the food first to the lead dogs of the team (with the intent to show to the other dogs that those are the most important dogs in the team). This is the rationale of starting at the front and working your way towards the end.
There's also the idea of always working your way out from wherever the bowls are filled, in order that you never need to walk with food in your hands by a dog that hasn't eaten yet. (This makes sense with snacks, as dogs sometimes try to snatch them when you walk by. I haven't seen any dog that makes a lunge for a bowl.)
And then there's the opposite idea that you should start at the farthest ends, so that you don't need to walk by a dog that is already eating and distract it. (Which might happen with very shy dogs. Otherwise, a dog with food in front of it will ignore anything else.)
So there are all kinds of 'in which order do you feed your dogs' plans.
Ben and Nina had a different concept, which boiled down to "Just feed the dogs."
We intentionally fed the teams in a different order every time. The dogs knew that they would get fed. But as there wasn't any discernable order to it, the dogs couldn't expect that they were "next in line", so, presumably, they didn't get stressed about it. (Though I don't think dogs are overly concerned about things like that. The whole thing might have more to do with the fact that it made things slightly more interesting to us. And that there was no feeling among the clients along the lines "my team is always the last to get food".)
In any case, dogs got fed. And the walking distances to the dogs were short.
Next day was also (mostly) a fun and easy day.
The start was simple, as we were continuing the way that we were heading the previous day, so Ben led the way and the other teams simply lined up and followed.
We were heading up Karasjohka river along the Norway/Finland border for roughly another 20 km. At that point, the Karasjohka and the Anárjohka rivers join up and the border continues south along the Anárjohka river. Note: This might be odd to read for someone knowing tje Sami language, as "johka" means river, so "Karasjohka river" comes across as "Karas River river", but it makes it easier to read for everyone else. At least it's not as bad as Torpenhow Hill in England, which, supposedly means "hill-hill-hill Hill".
The Karasjohka river comes in from the west and we followed that away from the border, into the Norwegian interior.
The weather was great again and offered a good opportunity to get some nice drone shots.
Unfortunately, I got a bit careless about that.
When I had flown the drone for a bit, I directed it to a place close to me, stopped my sled, flew the drone to a position where I could grab it.
I had misjudged the distance and when I tried to reach for it, there were a few centimeters missing,
So, I stretched to reach the drone and no longer had my full weight on the brake.
At that point, the dogs decided that it would be a good moment to get going again, so I ended up standing next to the drone, with my sled rapidly receding into the distance.
Classic beginner mistake: Never let go of the sled!
(And if in doubt, always anchor the sled.)
I grabbed the drone and Nina, who was driving the sled behind me, gave me a lift on her sled. In the meantime, Norbert had stopped and secured my team.
In the end, there wasn't any real problem. But that's exactly the kind of carelessness and inattention that causes problems, potentially serious ones, so I felt bad about it. Especially as it was due to something as irrelevant as getting a few nice pictures.
After that I stopped flying the drone while being on the sled, using it only while camping.
At least I got to play a bit with something else, which requires a lot less attention to operate - a 360° camera on a long 'selfie stick'.
It looks a bit (well, very) silly when using it. Like the world's most inadvisable lightning rod.
But as it is a 360° camera, there's no need to point it at anything specific, so you can start the camera, keep it running for a bit and see whether you can get any interesting views from the video later.
Like with drone images, this helps a bit to get some change from the usual dog sledding pictures, where you see the teams either head-on or from the back, in a single line, seen from human eye level..
You can get overhead shots, but you can also get some nice shots of your team or other teams with a bit of a side view.
In the evening we camped at the side of the river, close to where the Báišjohka river flows into Karasjohka river.
This time we didn't stay on the river itself, as there had been some overflow and the snow was slushy, with wet patches underneath. Not something anyone (dogs or humans) like to sleep on.
Instead, we had our camp on the river bank, with the dogs resting among the trees there.
In case anyone notices that there are only two tents set up instead of the usual three: Constanze didn't use her tent that night, but put her sleeping bag into a bivvy bag (which is essentially a waterproof bag around the sleeping bag) and slept outside, close to the dogs. (As someone once wrote about not liking tents: "If you're going to spend all the time, effort, and money to enjoy the great outdoors, why not sleep in it?")
At that point the plan was to turn onto Báišjohka river the next day and head south for a bit. About a day's distance away was Beaivvasgieddi chapel, a small mountain chapel from 1915, built with logs.
It's pretty much (intentionally) in the middle of nowhere. There's no settlement close to it. The place isn't special and it's not considered particularly sacred by anyone.
The whole idea behind it was to provide a church for Sami nomads that would be (more or less) in the middle of the area where they roam, without showing any preference to anyone.
Of course, the plan to go to Beaivvasgieddi chapel failed.
Not so much because all our plans failed (actually, we were heading along the planned route for most of the time - going to Beaivvasgieddi chapel would have actually been the detour, as it is not on the Finnmarksløpet trail).
It's mostly because I wouldn't have mentioned the plan if we had followed it.
"When there is a plan, things cannot go according to it. If they do, the plan becomes a spoiler." In writing, you don't explain the plan and then show that everything happens according to plan. This would be telling the same thing twice. You only detail the plan if it fails. Or, in other words: "The reason for revealing only failed plans to the audience is obvious. There's no drama in something going wrong if no one knows what was supposed to happen."
So yes. As I mentioned that we planned to go to Beaivvasgieddi chapel, it's obvious that we didn't.
After we had set up camp, Ben checked the weather forecast. He didn't look happy.
The weather was not going to be good, with lots of snowfall (potentially annoying, but manageable), but also with storm warnings again.
So we decided not to pitch our tents the next night, but head for something more massive.
There's a place called Mollisjok that is also a day's distance away. It's probably Norway's most remote cabin, 18 km from the nearest road.
We decided to drive our sleds to Mollisjok, spend the night (and weather the storm) there and then planned to continue the next day. (Hint: Which part of that didn't happen?)
The start next morning was a bit interesting, as each sled had its own patch of deep, wet snow to plow through before getting in line behind Ben's sled. So there was a chance of someone getting stuck, but actually everyone got through easily.
The first half of the day was similar to the previous ones. The trail was going further along the Karasjohka river. Despite the grim forecast, the weather was still pleasant, sunny and not very windy.
And the trail got more interesting (though still essentially flat and easy), as the river was getting smaller and had no longer a continuous layer of ice on it, but the areas with open water were increasing.
During the afternoon, the sky got increasingly cloudy. And an hour later, it was "good-bye blue sky".
At a place called Šuoššjávri we left Karasjohka river and continued north along a river named Iešjohka.
The trail was mostly on the river again, but there were various sections where the river was not wide enough and we went along paths through small forests and open areas.
That the trail wasn't wide enough doesn't mean that it was too small for the dog sleds. It doesn't get that small. But where the riverbed is not that wide, the water runs more swiftly and there's no ice on it. And if the river is small enough, there's often not enough of a path on the side for the dogsleds either. There's no fixed rule (and it presumably depends on how much water the river is carrying), but a quick check showed that we went around sections where the river was less than 25 meters wide.
By the time we reached Mollisjok, the weather started to look increasingly unpleasant and we were probably all glad that we weren't sleeping in tents that night.
Supposedly, during the night, the storm was really noticeable and you could hear the building creak a bit, but at that point I didn't notice.
At the last bit towards Mollisjok, I was happy with the way the dogs were paying attenion.
It was a long day (with about 66 km and more than five hours on the sled the longest day trip we had on the tour) and towards the end, Ben was some distance ahead of me and I lost sight of him. (Probably because we were almost at our destination and he wanted to check out the best place for the dogs to stay.)
And half a kilometer before reaching Mollisjok, there was a well used trail, with a smaller trail branching off to the side. And I had no idea which way Ben had taken. By default, I had assumed the bigger trail (I didn't know that this was the trail bypassing Mollisjok). The lead dogs, however, weren't confused at all and turned off onto the side trail.
A minute later, I could see the cabins at Mollisjok and knew that we were on the right track. But there was a moment of uncertainty. And the dogs did their job well.
The cabins are a popular destination for cross-country skiers in the area. (Well, relatively popular. With 18 km from the next road, but probably 50 km skiing distance from any place you're likely to start from, it's not attracting thousands of visitors per day. But there were two or three groups of skiers there that evening.)
As the place was busy, there was a restaurant service that evening. (The next evening it was only our group, so Ben did the cooking.)
Dinner was good, with lots of local specialties (which makes sense, if you're that far from the shops).
I think it was some sort of fish, followed by a serving of blodpalt (which is a bit like a British black pudding, but made with reindeer blood instead of pig blood).
But something in the food didn't agree with me and I left before sweets.
To make matters short (and to avoid going into unpleasant details), Nina and I got fairly sick that evening.
There wasn't any indication why. We thought about some sort of stomach flu or maybe food poisoning, but nobody else got sick. And everyone had been eating the same things. So it remains a mystery.
Next morning, I thought I felt better and was already ready to go out and feed the dogs. But while standing there, all dressed up for the outside, my stomach rebelled and I quickly got rid of the rest of the food that was left in me. (Nina presumably wasn't in any better shape.)
Ben quickly decided that there was no point in trying to continue with the dog sleds that day. It would be better to sit it out here in the cabin.
So I went straight back to bed and stayed there.
Ben, Constanze and Norbert went out to care for the dogs and, subsequently, did a little local sightseeing.
Judging by their pictures, it's a nice place. (And it was also a nice and sunny day again, which would have been great for dogsledding.)
By dinnertime, I was feeling well again. Ben made some stew and that went down (and stayed down) without any problems.
I am not sure why Norbert took these pictures. I don't think there are any other pictures of anyone eating during the trip. Maybe he was hoping for some 'interesting' reaction to the food. But I don't think that Norbert is that nefarious.
In any case, I was fine again after that and so was Nina the next morning.
Whatever it was, it was gone after a day and didn't impede us any more than that.
But we had lost another day (and a sunny one as well).
We had still potentially three days left for dogsledding.
But the forecast for the second day after wasn't that exciting. No storm, but essentially lots of snowfall. Which you can sled through, but it's not much fun. And potentially there's deep snow on the trails, which means slow going and is hard for the dogs.
That can all be done, if needed. But did we need to?
We decided to head for the kennel.
Have one nice day of sledding. Bring the dogs home. And then see what the next days will bring. Possibly doing a day tour from the kennel.
In the morning the sky was still overcast.
Around noon, the weather got worse, with the wind getting stronger and wet snow (or maybe rain) coming down.
I think that was the only time during the trip where I took out the balaclava from my sled bag in order to have more face protection than just sunglasses. And my gloves (which were simple working gloves, neither waterproof nor insulated) became wet and were no longer fun to wear.
Fortunately, that only lasted for an hour. (And it was ok for us on the sleds. We got lot of equipment on the sled and could change into warmer gear if we wanted to. However, we felt sorry for the skiers, which we met along the way. They still had a long way to go to Mollisjok and they had only the stuff they were wearing. Also, they had to do all the work themselves, while we simply needed to stand around and let the dogs do the work.)
By the time we got closer to our destination, the weather had improved again.
So did the views.
After crossing two lakes, we had essentially left the rivers by now and gone cross-country. This meant slightly more effort, as it involves more uphills. But they were slight and not difficult to do. But on rivers, you mostly see the river banks (plus some mountains in the distance). You get better vistas when going over hills.
We didn't go all the way to Alta.
From where we stopped, there were about 3 km to go before reaching Altaelva (the "Alta River"), which, as the name hints at, goes to Alta, roughly another 15 km down the river.
I am not entirely sure about the main reason of not going to Alta, as there were at least three to choose from. First, we weren't sure whether there would be a trail along the river or whether it might be too open to safely drive on. Also, we've already driven 60 km, so it would have been a long day. And finally, it takes some time to put all the dogs in the trailer and store the sleds (and it was more than an hour's drive to the kennel), so we didn't want to start doing that too late.
We met up with the truck and the trailer at some convenient parking place and got ready to leave.
At the parking spot, we also met Espen Bech. As far as I know, he had helped to bring the truck and trailer to the place. He was also there to take his dog with him.
One of the dogs that Ben had brought when he came with the 'replacement dogs' to Levajok (and which ended up in Constanze's team) belonged to Espen.
Something we didn't know until then (and Constanze was glad that she didn't know, as she might have gotten nervous about it) was that Espen had finished the Finnmarksløpet 600 km race in second place. And the dog was one of his lead dogs.
And I find it difficult to convey how strange that feels.
While we're not (quite) talking the best of the best here (that would be the winner of the Finnmarksløpet 1200 km race or the winner of the Iditarod), we're talking about the top end of a well known international racing event.
Trying to put that into perspective: While the biggest bicycle event is probably the Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia is probably the second best known event.
Assume that you are on a bicycle holiday, your bicycle breaks down and the tour guide organises a new bike for you. And then it turns out that the bike belongs to Daniel Martínez (who finished second place in the 2024 Giro d'Italia), it's the bicycle he used during the race and he wants to use it again next year.
Highly unlikely to happen that he would lend out his bike to a random stranger. And if you rode it, you would be seriously worried about damaging it.
Or you go to a car rental agency and they tell you that the car you reserved isn't available, but they give you the rally car of Guillaume De Mévius (second place in the 2024 Dakar Rally) as a replacement.
Again: This will never happen.
But on the dogsledding tour, the equivalent did happen. And it was not even seen as anything unusual. (Excepting the clients - we were flabbergasted.)
And we're not talking about some expensive, but replaceable equipment, like a bicycle or a car.
We're talking about someone's (near-)champion dog here!
It still feels strange to me. But seemingly it's fairly normal that dog mushers help each other out.
In any case, the dog was returned to Espen, we put our dogs in the trailer and drove to the kennel.
And that was the end of the main part of the dogsledding trip.
During the drive back to the kennel, I was happy, but a bit disheveled looking.
The next day started out as the weather report had predicted: Snowy.
As, without context, the image could show almost anything: It's a view across Langfjord, with some broken ice close to the shore and a more continuous ice layer further out. And lots of snow.
We mostly had a rest day, walked to the supermarket, about 2 km away, had some waffles there, walked back, petted the dogs, drank some coffee and relaxed.
The weather turned nice and sunny in the early afternoon, but then turned quickly back to overcast and snowing. Norbert was a bit disappointed by that, as he grabbed his camera and went out to take some nice pictures of the mountains across the fjord (now all sparkly in the sunshine), but by the time he got to a good photo spot, the weather had already changed again.
Within 15 minutes, the weather turned from this:
Into this:
During the night, the clouds mostly moved away and we got to see the northern lights again.
Somewhat strangely, the rest day was the day where I was most worried (at least for a moment).
In addition to the dogs, they also have two horses at the kennel.
Usually, they are in their own paddock.
But when I wanted to walk from the cabin (where we were staying) to the dogs, a horse was standing on the path.
I know next to nothing about horses, except that they are easily frightened and can kick, so I tried to give it a wide berth, walked slowly and kept as much distance as I could when walking past it.
But then the horse turned and started to follow me (which I found irritating, as I had no clue what it wanted) and when I continued walking, it approached me from behind and grabbed my arm in its mouth. It didn't bite down, but it clearly wanted my attention.
I know that dogs, especially young ones, who haven't been yet taught not to do that, will sometimes 'grab' you with their teeth to get your attention. It's not meant aggressively and they only 'bite' lightly, but it can be irritating when you don't expect it. Especially as it can lead to misunderstandings, if you notice a dog going for your arm, you pull the arm away, the dog attempts to hold you even firmer and that might cause it to really bite you.
But, at least with dogs, I know what is going on.
With the horse, I had no idea what it wanted.
In the end, I kept walking until I got to the doghouses (one the, seemingly correct, assumption that the horse would not walk among the dogs freely) and the horse stopped on the path. So nothing really happened. But I was more nervous in that half-minute than I had been on the whole trip so far.
Given the weather on that rest day, we had some discussion on whether we wanted to go dogsledding the next day.
We still had a full day before we were leaving the day after.
And, due to the delayed start at Neiden, the dog transfer from Masjok to Levajok and the sick day at Mollisjok, we had fewer days with actual dogsledding than originally intended.
On the other hand, it didn't seem to make much sense to go out while it was snowing a lot, simply to be out there dogsledding. Ultimately, we were on a vacation and having a miserable day for dogs and humans, for the sake of 'getting some dogsledding done', seemed silly.
However, after the clear night, the next day turned out to be bright and sunny again, so we decided to definitely have a day tour, a short fun ride, at the end of the trip.
My team was mostly the same as before, but I didn't have Maggie on the team this time, but had Svarten in her place.
Due to some mix-up, I had a slightly 'longer' dog team this time.
Instead of a gangline for six dogs, mine was configured for eight dogs.
As we were already harnessing the dogs when someone noticed it and it would have taken some time to take one of the segments out (and it doesn't make much of a difference in any case), we left it as it was and ran the dogs in a 2-1-1-2 formation.
It looks a bit unusual, but works well.
The scenery around Langfjordbotn is amazing. And it was fun to go for a ride there.
The ride was a pretty wild one, as we were running with empty sleds. This not only makes it for the dogs much easier to pull, but it also makes the sled more jumpy and agile. Which, on one hand, requires more attention from the driver, but also makes it more fun to ride.
There are also some challenging sections on their 'home circuit', including going over a major road (the E6, according to Wikipedia "the main north-south thoroughfare through Norway as well as the west coast of Sweden") and a bridge crossing after a corner. (Which everyone got across without problems. It's probably one of the things that are easier when you don't know much about them. If you get there, you drive across and that's it. If someone tells you that it's a difficult section, you are likely to tense up and fall.)
We also went about 200 meters uphill and downhill again, with freshly fallen snow from the previous day on the tracks. As a result, we didn't actually go that fast (the daily moving average was the second lowest of the whole trip). And it was only a short ride, less than 20 km. But it was fun all the way.
It was a great way to end the trip. (Much better than if we stayed in the cabin for another day, looking out at falling snow.)
Next day was departure day and everyone went their separate ways.
Norbert had an early flight from Alta, so he left before I even woke up. I had a flight in the late afternoon, while Constanze was staying for a night in 'downtown Alta' to fly home the next day.
And so the group dissolved.
Time for a trip overview.
The map shows the trail we covered by dog sled (solid red line), the part of the Finnmarksløpet 1200 that we initially wanted to follow (dotted blue line) and the Finnmarksløpet 600 trail (dotted orange line), which we followed in part between Karasjok and Šuoššjávri.
Here also a zipped KML file (for viewing in Google Earth) of the trail we took: dogsledding2024.kmz.
Daily distances and times were as follows:
| Date | From | To | Start | End | TotalTime | Pause | MovingTime | Distance | Avg. | Mov.Avg. |
| 25.03.2025 | Neiden | Neiden | 12:21 | 13:44 | 01:23 | 00:00 | 01:23 | 20.41 | 14.75 | 14.75 |
| 26.03.2025 | Neiden | Lake Camp | 11:31 | 16:21 | 04:50 | 00:11 | 04:39 | 55.96 | 11.58 | 12.03 |
| 27.03.2025 | Lake Camp | Masjok | 12:12 | 16:52 | 04:40 | 00:05 | 04:35 | 56.76 | 12.16 | 12.38 |
| 28.03.2025 | Masjok | Levajok | Dog Transfer | |||||||
| 29.03.2025 | Levajok | Rest Day | ||||||||
| 30.03.2025 | Levajok | River Camp 1 | 10:39 | 15:25 | 04:46 | 00:06 | 04:40 | 48.29 | 10.13 | 10.35 |
| 31.03.2025 | River Camp 1 | River Camp 2 | 11:12 | 15:19 | 04:07 | 00:18 | 03:49 | 51.76 | 12.57 | 13.56 |
| 01.04.2025 | River Camp 2 | Mollisjok | 11:40 | 17:03 | 05:23 | 00:13 | 05:10 | 66.19 | 12.30 | 12.81 |
| 02.03.2025 | Mollisjok | Rest Day | ||||||||
| 03.04.2025 | Mollisjok | End Point | 09:30 | 14:15 | 04:45 | 00:11 | 04:34 | 60.90 | 12.82 | 13.34 |
| 04.03.2025 | Kennel | Rest Day | ||||||||
| 05.04.2025 | Kennel | Kennel | 10:32 | 12:13 | 01:41 | 00:05 | 01:36 | 19.08 | 11.33 | 11.93 |
| Total | 31:35 | 01:09 | 30:26 | 379.36 | 12.01 | 12.46 | ||||
And that's all about the dogsledding part of the vacation.
But I didn't fly directly home after that. I spent a couple of additional vacation days in northern Sweden.
And more about that can be found here.
