Country sports > Articles > Husky Sledging from Finland to Russia

The phone conversation with the tour guide began like this.
Tour guide: “How many times have you been skiing?”
Me: “Well, never, actually.”
Tour guide: “But you've had a dog as a pet sometime?”
Me: “Well, no, actually. I had a goldfish once, but it died. I'm not particularly fond of dogs.”
Ominous silence over the phone.
Tour guide: “We can always helicopter you out.”

It was clear that I was the most inappropriate and ill-prepared person to take a husky sledge from Finland to Russia. But whereas my body was unused to anything more strenuous than running for the number 63 bus, and my experience was limited to one never-to-be-repeated session on a dry ski slope which was just like sliding down a giant toothbrush on my bottom, the spirit was willing. And the tour guide promised they could make a musher out of anyone, even me.

I would be trained in the fine art of mushing by one of Finland's foremost dog sledge racers, in temperatures in the minus 30s. Vesa was short and stout, looking half man, half-husky, with a frozen beard from which a smouldering roll-up always protruded. His affections were as ambiguous as his looks: “I like humans,” he told me. “But I love dogs.”

A former record-breaking Nokia salesman, he had moved to the white wilderness on Finland's eastern border, to live in a log cabin with his wife Carita, also a musher, alongside 80 Siberian huskies to whom he acted as a surrogate parent. He knew each by name. They lived in a series of kennels on the slopes behind his cabin, kept on long chains except when harnessed to a sleigh.

Each sleigh had six dogs - two 'wheels' at the back, chosen for their power; two 'middle' dogs, chosen for speed; and two 'leaders', chosen for their intelligence. Vesa only had one leader that wasn't, in the technical sense, a bitch.

After being tethered all night, the dogs were biting at their chains at the prospect of me pulling them at great speed over the snow. I was given a leather harness, rather like children's reins, to put over each head, and fumbled about hopelessly with it as the dogs threw their heads skywards and howled like wolves.

“My dogs are used to dealing with clients,” Vesa said confidently. “They know - hey! - this is a stupid woman. We'll harness up ourselves!”

My two travelling companions were far better prepared. If they hadn't been conceived in the southern counties, Nigel and Wendy could have been born mushers. Wendy - a picture of freckled health and well tuned legs - had lost count of how many times she has been skiing and was learning to fly in her little spare time. Nigel typically opened a conversation with, “When I was attempting the Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the world outside the Himalayas…” and turned it into a tale of disaster, in which he played the injured but heroic male lead:

“There was a Japanese guy blown off the summit ridge and died. I got up to 5,400 metres. The only reason I gave up was 'cos the wind was so high, and the wind chill factor made it minus 70, minus 80…” he continued, then finaled on his favourite phrase: “One wrong move and I would have been dead - but that's part of the fun.”

I had made mistakes from the moment I woke up on my first morning in Finland. As if I'd been in the concrete comfort of Kensington rather than an outside temperature of minus 36, I'd staggered down from my high bunk, brushed my teeth, washed my face, and began my beauty routine. Although it was almost ten in the morning, it was still dark so I was in no hurry. First I slapped on the face cream.

“Wash that off!” demanded Marco, Vesa's second in command. “It will freeze like a sheet of ice on your face the minute you go out.”

Carita provided Wendy and I with a tub of something rather like furniture polish, with no water content, which was the only protection safe to wear on my skin.

Getting dressed was an adventure in itself, from the several vests to the fur-lined boots. Marco issued us with a musher's kit - a wooden cup, known as a kuksa; a thick studded belt, and a knife (puukko) in a sheath to hang from it, which Marco declared would be “very useful in the forest.” I didn't like to ask why, but imagined warding off aggressive bears, fighting elks, and skinning rabbits when left stranded and starving for days in the snow…

The batteries for emergency torches would run out in the cold temperatures, so had to be kept warm by being packed under many lowers of clothing, close to our hearts.

Nigel, being the experienced one amongst us as far as extreme temperatures were concerned, had brought all his own kit. He'd even packed a dental repair kit. I comforted myself that - in the case of Nigel having to perform an emergency extraction on me - at least the freezing conditions might mean an anaesthetic would not be needed, as the frost would kill all feeling anyway.

“Of course,” he added, by way of warning to me, “women have poor circulation problems, because they're designed to reproduce. Everything concentrates on their middle section. So women have to clench and unclench their toes all the time they're on the sledge, to keep warm and prevent frostbite.”

A husky sledge is like a wooden zimmer frame on skis, with a pouch at the front to carry any injured huskies. This zimmer frame travels up to 20 kilometres an hour and tackles corner at an angle that defies gravity. The first day we made a trial run, covering less than 10 kilometres. My two leader dogs were called Friidu (girlfriend) and Noita (witch). I was not happy that Vesa had chosen Krukku, meaning angry, and Faisko, meaning as it sounds, for my wheel dogs, as their names did not bode well for an uneventful ride. They all spent a great deal of time defecating, farting and urinating bright yellow pee onto the pristine snow. And she seemed to be able to do all these things travelling at 20 kilometres an hour, which was a feat in itself.

Following Nigel's advice, I made superhuman attempts to keep my extremities warm in sub human conditions of almost minus 40. Clench, unclench, clench, unclench, I kept muttering to myself, screwing up my fingers and toes. But inside the four layers of socks and gloves, I could hardly distinguish where my digits began and my arms ended.

I blame the speed for making me fall six times, although, admittedly, I was the only one amongst us to do so. Once, Wendy had to jump off to avoid running over me as I lay stranded like a giant teletubby in the deep snow, but apart from that she was glued to her sledge. Vesa had to retrieve my wandering zimmer-frame-on-skis several times, tethering my dogs to a tree until I reached them. Even this short practice route was terrifying. Sometimes a tree had fallen over the track, and I had to squat down to avoid being decapitated at speed. I was so obsessed with concentrating on staying upright that Father Christmas could have been sledging along a parallel track and I wouldn't have noticed him. I was sweating so much that I could have worn a bikini and not felt the cold.

That night we stayed in an old lumberjack' cottage, the next in a former border patrol cottage. Almost everyone seemed to have abandoned this border region, which in truth is not fit for human habitation for five months of the year at least - from the arrival of the winter snow in January to the thaw in May - leaving just mad men and mushers. The cuisine was curious - mixed meat stew of pork, lamb and beef boiled up together washed down with copious amounts of vodka. After a hard day's mushing, when I'd been thrown from the sledge several times, I sometimes wished the menu had included husky.

The sleeping accommodation was often intimate, mostly bunk beds in a big room in a big wooden barn. Thrown together in the wilderness, we began to share stories around the fireside at night.

“I came back from Nepal with one of the most rare diseases on the planet - Q fever,” said Nigel, wrapped up in a blanket. “Until 1969, it was used as a US biological weapon like anthrax. The only people who get it in Britain work in abattoirs. I think you get it from shagging sheep. I thought I was going to die.”

Emerging from this primitive comfort each morning was like stepping out of a holiday into an SAS course. One morning, I panicked. Why couldn't I see? It was almost midday, so the sun should be up. They I realised - my eyelashes had frozen together and my eyes were still shut. It felt like a bad case of conjunctivitis. Prising my eyes open, I looked at the white world as if through frosted glass. My nose felt as if it were crated with blisters. I obviously wasn't wearing enough furniture polish.

Thank God the days were mercifully short, as I slept badly. The night before we were due to mush over the Finnish border into Russia, I had nightmares about border crossings and bandits. The tour guide snored all night. I realised now what the puukko knife was for. Stabbing the tour guide.

I tried to look on the bright side. “Into Russia!” I cheered at the huskies the next morning, hoping they'd trot sedately up to the border post. But we continued to zoom past the wooden posts with yellow bands on them, marking the no man's land, a two kilometre wide border between Finland and Russia where not even mushers may roam.

The border was surrounded by hire wire fence and manned by poe-faced men in large fur hats, just like an old James Bond movie. It took longer to cross than expected - mushers not being a frequent site at this obscure post - and the short day was already ending with many kilometres left to reach our destination. Nigel began to complain that his heel hurt. Then he began to say he had lost all feeling in it.

“ On other trips, I've got to the point where my hands have got so cold they've gone solid. If I hit them against something, they rang,” he said. His heel got worse still. Worried that he might have frostbite, Marco was called and our very own all-weather adventurer was emergency skidooed to the warmth of Kostomas, the Russian town we hoped to reach soon.

But with such short days, by mid-afternoon the light failed altogether, and we would have to drive our sledges a further ten kilometres through the forest in the dark. I am sorry to confess that I only thought of myself. Like those who elbowed the children out of the way when rushing for the last few seats in Titanic's lifeboat, I grabbed Nigel's miner's headlamp which he had thoughtfully brought with him and would no longer need, leaving Wendy alone to mush in the dark.

It was a little like riding a roller coaster blindfold. The track dashed through the thick forest, and even the weak headlamp only cast up strange shadows. You had to put all your faith in the dogs. Amongst the tall trees, I imagined all sorts of things in the dark, ghastly ghouls and ghosts. Later, over the vodka, Wendy confessed she had seen a Roman centurion, entirely togaed, walking amongst the firs.

We stayed at the Frigate Hotel, just outside the mining town of Kostomas, a real ship in the desert, whose bar was the local watering hole for Ukrainian prostitutes with skin problems and their pimps. Nigel, almost recovered from his ordeal, joined us in the bar. Vesa, encouraged by prodigious amounts of Vodka, attempted to press Wendy and I against the bulge in his salopettes. Failing miserably, he offered four Ukrainian girls to Nigel instead. But at last our cold weather adventurer had met his match.

“One would be nice,” he said. “Two would be very nice. But I don't think I could handle more than that.” Awash with vodka, we all retired to our separate saunas, as the dogs slept outside in chains, burying their bodies in the blanket of snow.


The next day dawned late, and we set out across an inland sea - the giant frozen lake Kuttijarvi - so large we couldn't see other side. There were the occasional footprints - elk? Hare? Other rare inhabitants of this wasteland? There was a long twilight, the lights reflecting off the frozen pans, then absolute dark. I switched off my miner's lamp. The stars were lights; the snow blew in my face. In the distance were clouds rising from chimneys, as wiry as the lines of smoke blowing from Vesa's roll-ups.

We were greeted at the Karelian hamlet of Vuokkiniemi by a small crowd of gangly teenage boys, who stood and stared but stayed their distance, watching these strange people unharness the huskies and mix their warm meal. Inside a home, we received a very warm welcome from the cold comfort outside, with cinnamon rolls and honey-sweetened strong Russian tea. Within an hour of arriving, all the electricity went and we were left to the candlelight. There was no running water, but there was an outdoor sauna, with boiling water to throw over the stones and wash in. When I went back outside, my wet hair froze over like a mat.

The only word I knew in Russian was ‘Cheers!’ It proved most appropriate, as there was vodka on the menu that night and again for breakfast the next morning, alongside the porridge. I, too, was now full of brave tales, just like Nigel. The day before I had mushed over 40 kilometres without falling once! My dogs had responded to my instructions, as if I'd been driving them for months, not days! At one point, in the middle of the lake, I had even let go of my sledge with both hands and rode along just standing up, waving my arms in the icy air! Was I anxious or afraid? Me? Of course not!

“One wrong move,” I said, “and I could, possibly, have been dead, but that was only part of the fun.” Vesa and Marco should be proud. They had made a musher, even of me.

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