The end of the winter season is getting close. Last year, they were able to drive sleds until the first week of May. It is still snowing at the moment and it fell over 10cm of snow overnight so we are breaking the trails again today.
I am "officially" a guide now. I have been on weekend tours for which I go away for 3 days with my guests. We drive between 2 to 3 hours with the dogs on the first couple of days and we sleep in wooden cabins in one of our camps, about 15 km from any civilisation. The camp is by a lake, surrounded by the forest and all you can hear is the silence. Sooooo nice.
I had encounters with rein deers on my way to the toilets, both late at night and early in the morning. It kind of wakes you up when you walk outside at 6.30am and find yourself facing this huge animal, starring at you only 5 meters away from where you're standing...
On my first weekend trip, I got lost once and drove through a village and ended up on a trail of a single snow mobile going through bushes! We had to turn around the dog teams one by one on this narrow and steep trail... But I kept control of the situation and my guests were good sport about it. We made it part of the "Adventure".
Like a young dog running without saving its energy, I burnt myself out on a couple of trips. I was so pleased to have nice guests that I spent late evenings with them, talking about the Northern life and about the dogs. Result: I was absolutely chattered and ended up completely missing a turn on a simple late evening tour. I was half dreaming at the back of my sled with a 12 dog team and 4 guests seating on the sled. I did not realise that I was coming to a junction and did not give the command to turn to my lead dog Takla, who, as a good lead dog, kept going straight on. Once I realised my mistake, half the team was already ahead of the junction and it was too late to turn the team. So we kept going and had to go through a narrow trail with lots of trees right on the edge of the trail. I feared this trail with such a big sled as a guest broke his foot last year against a tree. However, the ground was really icy and the guests had his foot outside the sled. Keeping in mind this story, I drove extremely carefully and slowly through that trail, making sure that my guests' feet were not pointing outside the sled. It all went well and we made it back to the kennel on time.
