Dog sledding

Time to play catch-up from the Clarion With hotel in Tromso…

On 13 Feb we spent the day relaxing at the snow hotel.

The morning I finally made a ‘snow angel’ in the thick snow outside our cabin. Some of the powder went into my sleeves and it was freezing, but worth it.

We had lunch at the Gabba restaurant – wilderness toasties. Toasted raindeer and cheese sandwitch – toasted in foil in the central hearth. This was accompanied by ‘curiosity cola’.. a Uk herbal drink that tastes much like ‘iron brew’. All this was served in wooden plates/mugs with a wooden knife/fork.

The evening we arrived at the dog area and kitted out for our husky ride. At -2 degrees C it was a little warm for the dogs and we had to make regular cool off stops for them to eat snow or roll round in the snow. Our musher was a gentleman from Germany who joined the team about four years ago and helps train the teams.

It was awesome to experience this and to have the evening meal of hot berry juice and freshly toasted wilderness toasties in a Sami tent in the country-side. Because it was snowing we were unable to see any Northern Lights, but the snow looked like glitter in the light of his headtorch. We even went on a frozen Fjord and could make out some faint Northern Lights from there, but the almost full moon made it difficult to see the colour.

The dogs love the opportunity to run and the attention lavished on them before and after the outing. One of the dogs in our team was named Ozzy and he loves it when you scratch his back – just where his tail starts. The other was a young fluffy boy who is really shy, but once we started the trip, he was very impatient to ‘hit the road’ again when we stopped for breaks.

Due to the cold and (mostly) the gloves I did not take any pictures during the excursion. The picture posted was taken as they were preparing for a midday outing the morning we left the snow hotel.