Wednesday morning, I was out feeding the dogs again. The drill holes in the lake had iced in again completely, confirming the sense of getting water the night before. Whilst I was checking out the state of the lake, I looked up to see a young Golden Eagle flapping across the valley and decided it was a great day to come. After porridge for breakfast (as usual) and making our sandwiches for lunch, we harnessed up our dogs to head off again. I'd managed to get into the middle of the group, and found my sledge next to David's whilst we waited for the off, but my dogs were really being bad by now. One of the lead dogs was coming onto heat and the boys at the back, who had been companionable enough before were now getting fractious with each other. The one on heat was also busy trying to get back to the other two or, for an alternative, standing over her neighbour. Having finally got them all to settle for a bit, I turned to David to tell him about the eagle. My big dog obviously noticed that my attention had strayed and chose this moment to attack his neighbour. They really got going, and I ran back, to try to separate them, big dog had white dog's muzzle in his mouth, though, and I didn't want to try to pull them apart in case bits of white dog stayed in the other's muzzle, so settled on thumping them. Per Thore appeared out of nowhere and had them apart before I could get a boot in. He then loosed the big dog's front lead and pushed him onto the ground, with his forearm over the dogs throat and gave him a serious talking to. The white dog, meanwhile, was bleeding from a cut below the eye, scarlet blood onto the white fur and the crisp white snow – a memorable image. Per Thore gave it a quick look and wandered off, to get us moving. I felt totally incompetent to be in control of the dogs.
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It was a tough morning, and a tough day – we covered about 60 kms with some serious uphill travel in soft snow. Just before the biggest hill, Per Thore took BBC David on ahead, so that he could get some grand scenic shots of us crossing a river valley and climbing up the hill past the camera. By this stage, though, I'd come to the conclusion that my team were easier to handle from the front than from the back of the sledge, so when we were stopped for what looked like being more than a couple of minutes, I'd drop the anchor and go around to be closer to the dogs. Standing over the top of Baloo – the one on heat, I could keep her in place quite easily, leaving my hands free to eat a sandwich or take photos. Now, it seems that the big dog hadn't much taken to his talking to and didn't feel his colleague had quite received the lesson he needed, so he went for him again. There was no way I was going to let that happen, so I leapt through the air, and came down knee-first, body checking the pair of them apart and giving big dog a big thump. The little blighter was well behaved for at least half an hour after that and, over the course of the morning I came to the conclusion that we'd both learned a lesson.
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What
was also amazing for me was following Carl up the hill. He was in
the top group by weight, and he really worked hard all day –
pushing up hill in deep snow when I barely had to get off the sledge,
and keeping up a good humour all the way. I noticed at one stop that
he was sweating so much that even the zip on his breast pocket was
leaking! At one point there was congestion in front of us, and I
heard him shout in frustration “I'm not going to put my brake on
going up the hill!” Of course, some of us were continually putting
our brakes on up hills, trying not to over-run the team in front.
Despite his work rate, though we fell well behind the lead group at
one stage, and David had also fallen a good way behind me, which
meant that Carl and I were the only witnesses to the most spectacular
crash of the week. We came over the breast of a hill, and could see
ahead that the lead group had followed the left hand side of the
markers, down the other side, keeping away from the edge. However,
the gap meant that Carl's team decided to choose their own route on
the other side of the markers, and mine, nose to tail with his, went
the same way. I tried to steer my team back, pulling the sledge to
the left, and overbalancing it; it nearly went completely over, but I
was able to leap out to the side and rebalance it as I ran along.
After such a near miss, I came to the conclusion that I was safer
following Carl than trying to get back on track. Mind you, he had
the same worry I did, careening down hill on an untested track, and
tried the same manoeuvre, with a different outcome, crashing deep
into soft snow. The cloud of snow exploding around him was enough to
totally obscure his sledge for a second or two – and my only choice
of collision avoidance was another attempt to yank the sledge to the
left. Again, I nearly went over, having to leap off to the side to
keep my sledge upright, but at least this time the dogs wanted to go
left too. I braked to a halt just in front of Carl who had managed
to hang onto his sledge, and watched him shaking the snow out of his
goggles, hood, and just about everywhere else. Before the others had
caught us up, he said he was ready to go on – a great recovery, I
reckon. Then, for a few minutes, I was at the lead of our little
group navigating my own way across the arctic, with no other sledge
visible in front of me. Exhilarating!
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By the time a yell of "lunch" came down the line, I was dreading any extended stops. My team was great whilst we were moving, but any stop of more than a minute or two and they started getting fractious. The doctor made a point of checking up on us a couple of times a day, and I found myself half joking during the lunch break that I had a sore hand from beating my dogs. She said she'd talk to Per Thore about it, and I instantly found myself worried that he'd swap out one of my dogs! For all the pain they were causing me, I felt I'd be marked as a failure if I got given an “easier” dog. Well, when Sid and Per Thore came back past me, Per Thore gave the wheel dogs (which is what the back pair are supposed to be called, apparently) another talking to and banged their heads together, whilst Sid told me that the big dog was the one that had peed on him early in the week. Added to what Per Thore had said the previous morning about Baloo, I decided that I must have his high esteem, as he seemed to have given me the two naughtiest dogs in the pack.
The
post-lunch trek was rather shorter than the morning, but we had
another entertaining diversion – though it wasn't very clear at the
time. It seems that Peter, very tall and thereby at the heavy end of
the group's spectrum, had fallen a bit behind the front group, and
his dogs had decided on their own shortcut. This had taken them
around the breast of the hill and into a group of trees, and the rest
of us were following faithfully behind. Well, it was obvious he was
in difficulty, and half the party ended up stopped side-on to the
drop-off of the hill. Meanwhile, Peter's dogs had stopped and
weren't paying him any attention – I could tell from 100 metres
away that he wasn't making complementary suggestions. The doctor,
who was usually stationed in the middle of the party, took her sledge
through to try to get Peter turned around, and his dogs and hers
immediately got into a tangle. By this stage, Per Thore was headed
back towards us, but one of the lead sledges headed off after him,
without a driver, so that took a little sorting out. Per Thore then
stood at the bottom of the slope and yelled at us to come straight
down. I tried to set my dogs in that direction, but they only headed
off towards Peter's tangle, so I stopped them again. Then, rather
than talking to us dumb humans, he called Carl's lead dogs by name,
and they immediately headed off towards The Owner. With someone to
lead, the rest of us followed, and about twenty minutes later we
reached camp.
We'd
arrived before 4pm. Even with all the trials, we did twice the
distance in the same time as the previous day. My dogs actually lay
down on arrival, so it must have been enough exercise even for them.
Lower Mollesjohka (pronounced Mollesok) was comparatively luxurious –
flushing toilets instead of chemical, and electricity for recharging
camera batteries. There was even a shower, but just one between all
of us, and then a group on skidoos turned up. They were Statoil
staff on a team building exercise. The sudden appearance of
strangers and the busy buzz of mechanical engines broke up the
feeling of Arctic Wilderness, but the locals made us Norwegian
Waffles with Gietost (that strange, dark, sweet goat cheese I'd only
ever seen at, I think, Aunty Gerrie's house in the 1970s) or jam.
Most of us felt
we'd had a tough day, that it hadn't been enjoyable, but there was a
quiet mood of accomplishment for having faced up to the difficulties
and overcome them.