Back                                    Continued

Before you start reading about Tracey’s and my epic adventures I suggest you do as I did when writing them, ie, pour yourself a large glass of wine and munch away on a block of chocolate!! 

We departed on the eve of Wed. 1st May '96, not feeling the slightest bit guilty about leaving a forlorn Craig waving g’bye on an empty platform. I had eased my conscious by stocking the fridge up with lots of goodies and the cupboards with ironed shirts. We arrived into Kiruna a mining town in the far north of Sweden mid morning and hoped to embark on a three day hike
from Mt Kebnakaise to Abisko in Lappland, only to be told that the track was under 2 metres of snow. So much for that idea! We then caught the next train to Abisko a village full of ski resorts and set up camp just out of town. In Sweden and Norway you can rough camp anywhere you like as long as you are 100m away from the buildings and that you are enviromentally friendly. After we got the tent set up we then went to the tourist office to plan our next few days. They kindly warned us that 2 bears have been seen in the area and to be careful. So with the worry of this and the -12c during the night, we didn’t get much sleep!!

The next morning we had ½ hour telemarking ski lesson and then ventured on a 20km cross country guided ski trip. 11km of which was up a vertical mountain or should I say mountains,, as our guide had a warped sense of humour by saying" Keep going this hill is the last" , but he said this at least 7 times! Anyway when we finally got to the top the view was spectacular but I have no proof of this as my camera froze up due to the low temp. Talk about timing! We then took the skins off our skies and went downhill for 2km to a chalet and drowned our aches and pains and frustration with mulled wine and waffles. The last leg of the tour was an easy 7km downhill ski. As we had begun the ski at 8.30am and didn’t finish until 10.45pm we decided to shout ourselves a night in the hostel,, luxury!!. We also heard that they were expecting -20c that night which also prompted our decision.

On Sat. 4th we began that morning rather slowly, literally speaking as we could hardly move our muscles. We did muster up enough energy though to do a 2hr husky sled ride. This was fantastic! We both were given 4 dogs each and a sled and again a quick lesson on the skills involved. It was quite difficult and didn’t seem to get any easier as we progressed. The dogs just have one speed and that’s FAST! We had to stand on the back of the sled on two narrow bits of wood and if we wanted the dogs to slow down we then had to balance on one foot whilst lifting the other onto a break, meanwhile the sled goes all wonky because of the uneven weight distribution. Needless to say we didn’t break too often. I had some classic falls due to
the dogs going one way and the sled with me going another way. I had a tendency to wrap myself, sled and dogs around trees,, but it was fun! Following this we then trained it to Narvik on the most scenic rail journey in Scandinavia. The sights were breathtaking, totally different to what I imagined the North Pole to look like. We also saw heaps of reindeer. We arrived in
Narvik around 7.30pm and walked 2km out of the town and camped in the forest.