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While in Lapland, we wanted to check out a husky tour. I had previously joined a husky tour in Alaska with someone who had raced in the Iditarod and wanted to see the difference.
Adventure by Design had booked a Bear Hill husky tour for us. The tour company picked us up a couple blocks away at a local hotel, Arctic City Hotel, because they didn’t pick up at our hotel.
We arrived at the location where the tour would start about 30 minutes later. We dressed into warm thermal coveralls, hats, gloves, and boots provided from Bear Hill.
We were able to have our own dog team with 5 dogs. That meant we were able to mush ourselves! The guide demonstrated how to properly mush and the hand signals, such as go, stop, and slow down.
We were told that this husky tour would be a warm up for the dogs as we were the first group of the day.
Chris was the first one to start mushing. I sat down in the sleigh and covered up with the provided blanket. When we got the go signal, Chris pushed off and on went the excited dogs. They were barking and so enthusiastic about getting to run.
Chris did a pretty good job mushing. When going around a curve, the musher has to lean to the side the curve is turning towards. If going to fast, the brake had to be applied to slow the sleigh from running into the dogs.
When going up a hill, the musher would hop off and push the sleigh to help the dogs. This would get tiresome but we really didn’t want to over work the dogs. We did see some moron that would put on the brakes pretty much the whole time, even up a hill, and wouldn’t help push the sleigh up hill. It was all I could do to not yell at him!
Now it was my turn to mush the dogs.
It really is much easier to sit in the sleigh. It is fun to mush though, and is more work that it appears to be. The musher is in control of the dogs and I really wanted to do my best to make things easier on them.
When the tour was over, we gave our love and thanks to the dogs that we had spent almost 1 1/2 hours with.
Then, we headed in for some warm berry juice and cookies while we talked about our experience.
It was fun to get to be a musher this time around. It gives me a whole new outlook on the work that has to go into being a musher. Plus, the dogs are greatly cared for. The owners rotate them on tours and give them days off which I think is very good.
The dogs were smaller than the dogs I had seen in Alaska. But, I think they were cared for just as much.
Did you know that mushing originally came from the men who mushed the snow for the dog sleds before races?
Here’s a video of our husky tour with Bear Hill.
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