Day 2 (1 April 2007)

The day started with a briefing by Tore, who owns the centre with his wife Tove. Tore led our expedition, supported by Jan, our other guide. We used around half of the 200 huskies from the centre. We helped put our huskies in their cages (often two or three dogs in one cage!), and put the 18 sleds onto the roofs of two trailers for the two hour journey to Helligskogen in the mountains, where our expedition started.

We were briefed on how to steer and brake the sled, and what commands the huskies would understand (in Norwegian, naturally!). It was at this point, that we were each introduced to our dog teams.

My two lead dogs were two sisters - Sprite and Pepsi. Sprite is the dog with the white face. The overall standard of the huskies was very high, and many of the dogs had been on major sledding expeditions. For example, both Sprite and Pepsi had been on the 1,151 mile 10 day 2006 Iditarod Great Sled Race from Anchorage to Nome in Alaska. Indeed, Sprite helped pull Tore's sled for the full 1,151 miles.

My middle two dogs were also female - Divi and Verti; named after mountain huts on our route.

The back two dogs were huge powerful males - Gappo and Cola. They were all wonderful dogs, and over the trip I would get to know them and their personalities. All of the dogs were very friendly, and many just wanted to jump up and lick your face. The dogs are very lean and in superb condition. They each weigh around 20 kg and eat 9,000 calories per day on the expedition!

The weather was very poor - lots of rain and sleet, which meant that most of our kit got very wet - despite being in waterproof bags. This was to be the bane of the trip, as it was to prove very difficult to dry our clothes.

We had an enormous amount of very good food. Breakfast was generally instant porridge with bread. Lunch was sandwiches of cheese, ham and salami, often taken on the hoof. Dinner was various boil in a bag meals, which were much better than they sound. These were cooked on a parafin stove, inside the tent.

One of the physically hardest tasks was staking out the dogs after a hard day's sledding. This involves taking a cable with 12 clips and a rope at each end. The cable is fixed to two trees, or to a board buried in the snow when we were above the tree line. The hardest part is when you have to wade through snow 2 to 3 feet deep while wrestling with very strong huskies.

The other major challenge is finding enough water for ourselves and for the dogs. It proved very easy to get dehydrated. The options are to take water from a river, drilling a hole in a frozen lake and melting snow on the stove.

Day 1 (31 March 2007)

After a 02:45 alarm call, the expedition team members met at Heathrow at around 04:00 for our early flight to Oslo. We arrived in Tromso on time at 13:35. We were collected at Tromso airport and driven to the Tromso Villmarkssentre (Wilderness Centre). We met many of the 200 huskies used at the Villmarkssentre and were given an all-in-one Arctic suit and expedition boots for our trip.

We stayed overnight at the centre in a traditional Sami tent. The weather was not promising - a mixture of rain, sleet and snow.

The challenge

This blog describes and illustrates my trip to Lapland from 31st March to 7th April 2007. I drove a team of 6 huskies from Norwegian Lapland into Swedish Lapland, all north of the Arctic Circle. We sled over 250 km, and slept in tents. The challenge was organised by Global Adventure Challenges.


I was joined by 15 people from many parts of the United Kingdom, each of us undertaking the challenge for our own chosen charity. My charity was Marie Curie Cancer Care, who play a key role in caring for many people who are terminally ill with cancer.

If you would like to support me and Marie Curie Cancer Care, then please donate on-line via www.justgiving.com/JohnLapland