TOTALLY WENT DOG SLEDDING IN NORWAY

So I TOTALLY went DOG SLEDDING in Norway. I feel like a little bit of a badass right now.

I mean, the dogs really were the ones who did all the work– I would hate to run 15-20 km, let alone in -29˚C weather, in the snow, hauling a sled. But man did THEY love it. 

The great thing about Huskies is that although they have ADHD and bark whenever something interesting is going on and jump like frogs when on a lead and pull like nobody's business, when they're running in snow, its as if you've just given them Adderall and put them in their favorite place. They become totally silent besides the panting, they zero in on the trail, they leap and strain when they're held back, and they know, they KNOW, they are GOOD DOGS. 

But more on that in a minute.

Oly and I decided to go dogsledding because why the hell would you not when presented with the opportunity. I appreciate my job so very, very much, that not only can I drop things for a long weekend in Norway, but that I have the advantage of a nice stipend and an excellent location to launch me into adventures like this one. I am so goddamn sickeningly lucky.

Flight from Oslo to Norway! No propeller plane :( ...Oh well

 We headed to Birk Husky in Kirkenes (Kirk-EN-ESS) because it was above the arctic circle and had amazing reviews on Trip Advisor (totally substantiated reviews). It did, however, take a hell of a long time to get there. Kirkenes is a small town, and its airport has maybe 5-6 departure and 5-6 arrival flights in a day... all of them connecting to Norwegian cities I believe. We left Thursday afternoon planning to arrive in Kirkenes Friday afternoon to start a weekend excursion by dogsled, extending to Sunday afternoon. As it turned out, we were the only ones on the weekend excursion, so it was just the two of us, our guide, and 14 dogs for the whole weekend!

  Kirkenes is so far north that the day we arrived, the sun did not breach the horizon at all. We could see only the warm glow of what was either a sunrise or sunset (really hard to tell, especially when the light is there only briefly and any point could have been the transition between the two), and then the bright reflection of the half moon off the snow. We were fortunate to arrive when there was some of this light making it over the curve of the earth, and we got to see amazing sights on our 1.5 hour drive from Kirkenes Airport to the Birk home camp in Melkefoss.

On our way to BIRK, we got to know Evie, our guide for the weekend. Evie was actually from England, on work-placement in Norway for 9 months. As it turns out, she was majoring in ADVENTURE (it really deserves capital letters. I had no idea this was even a thing. Her major involves going on field trips to learn how to kayak, rock climb, hike, journey etc. SO COOL. I mean, she ended up working for a DOG SLEDDING business in Norway! What the hell are the rest of us doing with our lives?). 

As we traveled through Kirkenes, we learned a bit about the town's history. In other words, Oly and I needed to ask Evie why IN THE WORLD anyone lived up here at all. Kirkenes (which I'm sorely tempted to refer to as Quirkiness b/c of the sound similarities) is mainly a mining town... I'm sorry... was mainly a mining town. The mine shut down recently, and unemployment has skyrocketed. Besides mining, there doesn't seem to be any specifically predominant profession. When Evie reflected on it, it seemed to her most people living in Kirkenes held 2 or 3 jobs smaller or more obscure jobs at once. 

Our brief stop at the post office gave us a glimpse of local life–locals use standing sleds to get around, kind of like razor scooters. The opening of a new American candy shop was a BIG DEAL. 

After leaving the town, we traveled down the most shit road in Norway. No seriously–it's widely known by both official and local channels to be the most terrible road in the entire country. The snow actually improves the road because it fills in some of the potholes. There were plenty of dynamite grooves in the rock along the road...some seemed 12-15 feet long. It must have been pretty difficult to carve the road out of the mountain. 

However, this absolutely terrible road did afford us some spectacular views. We got an excellent view of the frozen fjord. It is cold enough here for salt water to freeze and freeze thick enough for tours to take people out for rides down the river.

Frozen Fjord

Melkefoss, where Birk Husky resides, is RIGHT THE FUCK NEXT TO the scary Russian Border. Why is it a scary russian border? Well, if you haven't been paying attention, Russia has some pretty nasty politics at the moment. Plus, the border itself has a 2.5km buffer zone across the river separating Norway and Russia: if you are seen in the border zone, you are either shot because you are running away or you are caught (I think that is probably much more rare) and heavily fined. We were close enough that our guide, Evie, specifically mentioned that we should probably not do this. The weird thing is, apparently, you can see plenty of Norwegian border guards, but you never see the Russian border guard. In Russia, you don't see border guard: border guard sees YOU. 

When we arrived at Birk, it was straight into the snow suits for us and out to see the dogs.  The dogs live in a field of dog houses with sharply defined circles of packed snow around the posts to which the dogs are chained. Here we were greeted by 43 barking, jumping, friendly, beautiful doggies with lots of traditional Nordic names.

BUT OH NO!! As soon as Evie started explaining how to set up the sleds, a calamity arose:

THE BOOGER SITUATION

As soon as I got outside, I was absolutely convinced I had some really big boogers just at the opening of my nostrils! How embarrassing! I was trying to deal with it quickly and neatly, but when you're wearing layers upon layers under a snow suit and your hands are tied up by snow worthy gloves, you have little more capacity to deal with the situation than an astronaut on a space walk! It took 5-10 minutes of me being entirely distracted, barely taking in the information about the sled, and trying to blow my nose unsuccessfully before Oly mentioned how weird it felt to have his nose hairs freezing and thawing as he breathed. 

Birk Husky home base

Oh.

Yep. 

That's a weird feeling. 

Once identified, the situation became much more manageable in that I realized the only thing I could do was ignore it and that more than likely there were not, in fact, boogers adorning my face.

Freed from this, I started to help collect the dogs and harness them to the sleds. The first thing you need to do is retrieve the dog. This involves walking past all the other ones who desperately want to go with you to retrieve the lucky, bouncy powerhouse who will get to pull your sled. The pups are so excited and so strong, you need to pull up on their collars and walk/wheel them down to the sled on their hind legs. Lead dogs first, then the others. 

Puppy in a harness!! Lead dog.

Oly has just successfully harnessed a husky.

Once your dog is at the lead ropes, you stand over him and hold him in place by squeezing your legs together over his thinnest part, right above his hips. You can then attempt to wrestle him into the completely frozen harness: big circle first, followed by little circle, with the complicated stuff on his back. Then pick up his foot like you do a horse's hoof and pull his legs through each side of the harness. Pull his collar above the harness, hook it up to the lead in front, hook his harness to the extension of the lead in back, and you have yourself a sled dog.

But they are SO excited... while we were in the middle of harnessing, one of the dogs escaped!! She was sprinting around wreaking havoc–everybody else was so envious that she was free and running that we were drowned in a cacophony of barking while one of the guides went to go chase her down. When the dogs escape, they aren't likely to go far... they like to stay near their pack. They just love running so much they want to frolic! The escapee dog was named Arya...ironically not after the Game of Thrones character.

The names of our dogs!

Ta Da!

After harnessing our dogs, all you really get as far as instruction is a short description of how to push the "slow" and "stop" buttons (ok, really simple mechanical levers for increasing friction) which are between the two slim foot boards fixed the sled runners. Being uninitiated to sledding, it seems to be worryingly simple, but as soon as the rope is pulled and the dogs take off, you realize you're fine! More than fine! It's fantastic!

I think that's Oly on the sled...
*There will be a sledding video on the next post; it was too dark on Day 1 for video.

Remember, the dogs are very smart... they know how to follow Evie's lead sled, how to avoid obstacles, and how to pull the sled around the twists, turns, and hills on the path. All you really need to do, big heavy human, is hold on tight and tell them when to stop! (Because MAN do they love to keep going.) It's hard to go off the track because the path is a couple feet down from the fine, fluffy surface snow–it seems a bit like Olympic tobogganing on a mostly flat surface.

The dog sled goes at a moderate speed–while Evie's sled had 6 dogs to plow through the fresh snow, ours had 4 dogs each. It's fairly easy to get used to it, especially once the dogs have gotten their initial excited sprint out of the way and have settled into a solid pace. You could easily run a few steps behind them and not lose hold of the sled.

Once you're out of the dog yard, everything gets magical, quiet, mediative, and exhilarating. The dogs and the sled are quieter than you'd imagine. There are amazing expansive views with mountains and frozen snow meadows, wide frozen fjords, rivers, and bogs, close paths through trees heavily laden with snow like a Christmas card... When you enter these trees, it becomes very intimate–like you're on a movie set or theater stage–as if there isn't anything beyond the scope of your vision. The snow, too, quiets everything and contributes to the sense that you're enclosed in a private, frozen world with the dogs.

We totally should have brought a GoPro or four.

Our course consisted of mostly flat terrain with a few whoop-de-whoop hills the dogs hauled us up and then sprinted down. Not very big ones... the big hill came on Sunday, and man was that fun. At one point the trail was so snowed over, Evie couldn't see the track and forgot where to turn until one of the lead dogs turned off in the right direction! (Good Dog!) They've been doing this long enough to know exactly where they are... they are far better navigators than we are. Well... some of them. Birk (pronounced kind of like 'bik"... imagine you're saying "berk" with an Austrailian accent) often got distracted and forgot to keep focused on where the trail was going. Apparently he once wasn't paying attention and ran into a tree! Poor puppy. You'll hear more about Birk in a bit... He became our favorite dog. *Bit of trivia: yes, Birk is named after the company... Apparently, Birk is the name for some sort of tree in Norway (an aspen? I forgot).

Standing on the sled, my fingers were getting very, very cold very, very quickly. Having to push the sled through deep snow really warmed me up, even though at this section of the trail we needed to stop every few minutes to give the poor lead dogs on the lead sled a rest. They very much earned the extra meat block treats and ashy fallen sausage from lunch that we gave them.

When we got to the wilderness cabin, it was actually quite dark– my best guess of the time was 5pm, which was two hours off... Eating lunch at 3pm seriously felt like a late night dinner.

Here's the wilderness cabin in the light...

And here's where Oly started learning to Apparate.

The trail itself ends at the lines of dog houses on one side of the supply road, opposite the cabin. The cabin site also contained a storage facility for dog-feeding and human-warming supplies (firewood, reindeer skins, etc), a fire pit, and a lovely outhouse with no heating.

Our first job, after unharnessing the dogs, was chopping up their treats: totally frozen meat blocks, made of all the bits of meat we don't want to eat, ground up and formed into cubic portions. We took an ax to these exposure-frozen chunks to halve them and took them back to the dogs to give them their post-workout protein load. ;)

Oly chops meat blocks

They know you're coming for them. They all strain for the meat, but each of them eats it differently. Some leap up and catch the whole frozen thing in their mouths (it's freezing my fingers off, even with my gloves, so I don't know how they do it). Some leap for it and miss, some retrieve it and immediately burrow into their dog houses to hoard and devour it. Some gnaw it to bits on the spot, some look like they are trying to swallow it whole without chewing (Alit). Some try to ignore it completely and beg for another while they have the chance...

And some do a happy dance! This is where we fell in love with Birk.

Our attempt to start a fire by ourselves (for our own lunch) wasn't terribly successful... If you really want to start a fire, stack two logs bark up next to each other and place two perpendicularly, bark down, on top and shove as many fire starters in as you could fit in a mailbox full of political advertisements and light stuff on fire until it gets going. But if you keep watching it it will never get going.

While we were pointedly not watching the fire, we went out to attempt to hack ice to pieces while leaving our shins intact. We walked/slid with our buckets down to the river, which we never would have found in the dark (or in the light, for that matter), if Evie hadn't already gone out there and dug a hole in the snow and ice. I have no idea how she found it under the 2-3 feet of snow that covered it... Maybe she has super senses.

Oly chops through the ice covering the river.

We used the ax (which we didn't lose down the ice hole, though the consequences and potentiality did cross our minds) to hack more of the ice and snow away until we could use the scoop to clear the ice from the water hole and begin to fill our buckets with creek water. We used this for anything we needed water for- it was clean enough to drink immediately, without treatment, and it tastes amazing that way (once you got over the psychological hurdle instilled by years of suburban and city living). The ice left over in the bucket pre-chilled the water, which was nice once we were warm and toasty inside.

SAUSAGE

"Lunch", or as I like to call it, "I-haven't-eaten-since-7am-and-its-pitch-black-now-so-my-body-is-telling-me-to-scarf-it-ALL", satisfied quite a lot of that fascination you have as a kid with open-flame cuisine. We soon perfected (and by perfected I mean became passable at) the art of nudging garlic bread and tortillas closer to the fire, burning them on one side while they were still frozen by the -12˚ air on the other, hanging sausages over a metal rod suspended over the flames, burning their outsides while the insides were still nice and cold (or alternatively warming the sausages up nicely only to have them drop into the ashes), and spearing absolutely everything we could get our hands on, including raw bacon, and APPLYING HEAT.
The real trick is eating everything quickly during the short space of time it is actually at the right temperature: not still as hot as the coals themselves and not yet frozen by the surrounding climate.

Once the sun was really down, dogsledding was pretty much over, so we bundled inside the wilderness cabin. The cabin itself had no plumbing besides buckets, heating besides the wood stoves, or lighting besides the massive candle lit chandelier. It looked really awesome in there. This was all quite effective, as we found out–the wood stoves could make the internal temperature of the cabin reach a full 28˚C... about an equivalent distance from 0˚ as our coldest temperature that weekend, -29˚C.

While the cabin did have a few games (with Norwegian instructions) and card packs, we could have afforded to bring a book. It did, however, provide some insight into Norwegian culture and perhaps into our own psyches. The cabin contained two little gnome dolls, placed on high shelves. In explaining gnomes in Norway, Evie referenced the Frozen rock trolls/gnomes as a rough guide. On Christmas, Norwegians put to special rice dishes to satisfy the trolls and to receive gifts from Father Christmas.

Further interesting artifacts were the wooden carved coffee mugs hanging from strings, hooked onto the curtain rod. All of the guides had received their own as christmas gifts that year–this shallow wooden coffee mug is a handy traditional travel item.

There was also a very interesting stick with some pinecones affixed to one end and lingonberries threaded on copper wire wrapped around the other, up to the midsection of the stick. As Evie wasn't quite sure what this signified, Oly and I made up our own stories for it...

Oly's story:

This stick was a gift from the trolls to the humans to thank us for dying because when we do, we feed the earth, and trolls are of the earth. (Oh–did I mention the bones tied to the top of the stick? There were bones tied to the top of the stick)

Kira's story (with help from Oly):

The stick is actually a scimitar wielded by James Bond in 2008 during the great Norwegian Troll Wars (the recession hit everybody hard). The pinecones at the top were very effective in dispersing the trolls. I mean really dispersing them (but not hurting them...). When you hit one with the scimitar, pieces of it go flying everywhere: a troll leg here, a nose there, a couple unidentified rocky bits over there... Each fragment creates a new troll,  so each original troll can create a whole bunch of smaller trolls.
Trolls used to be a whole lot bigger.

*End DAY 1*
Day 2: Dogsledding videos!