Indianette Jones

Following my last story, a friend of mine compared me to Indiana Jones. I think this new story will prove him right... ;-))

We were preparing an evening coffee tour. Our guests sit on a long and large sled, called Pullmanki. We drive through the forest and stop in a big Sami tent (like a tepee) where we serve them tea, coffee, sandwiches and sometimes a salmon soup. We had 11 guests that evening and we needed 3 sleds to carry them. A male guide, my boss' wife and myself were the guides.

The male guide prepared his team on the left side of the yard, my boss' wife (I will call her CK for simplicity) was on the right side and I was in the middle. The male guide started first, then CK and finally my team.

CK started her team as I was still putting a backpack on. Then I unhooked my team and gave the command to my lead dog, Rambo, to go "Yah, yah Rambo, yah".

As the sled was going down hill, I saw people lying in the middle of the way. I hit the brake very hard and realised that CK's sled must have tilted, the guests had fallen off with CK who was now running in the middle of the road, trying to run after her dog team that had continued without her...

Within a split second, I realised that the only way to proceed was to try to catch her team with my team. I told my lead dog to go and screamed to CK to jump on my sled. I tried to slow down my team as much as I could as my 10 ten dogs were full of energy and eager to go fast and she managed to jump on the left runner of my sled. Trying to keep our balance while sharing the runners of the sled was proving a little difficult in a sharp left turn and on the bumpy forest trail but we were both hanging on, determined to catch up with her team .

Luckily, we found her team at a standstill about 500 meters further in the forest. The snow anchor had fallen off and had diged into the ground, forcing the team to stop.

I secured my team with my snow anchor and a rope around a tree and ran to get her guests who were still standing on the road where they had fallen off. Nobody was hurt and, as they were all young university students, they were laughing about the experience.

Once we got everybody back on her sled, I helped her to pull the sled backwards to slacken off the rope of the anchor so we could pull it off the ground. It took us a few attempts as her 11 dogs were pulling in the opposite direction, eager to be on the move again!

Later, CK thanked me for "saving her bacon" that evening. I felt happy I had now enough experience to react fast and be able to help in this kind of situations.

"Things will happen that you have never dreamt off"