3-Day Arctic Dogsledding Tour

3 Days as a Musher on the Finnmark Plateau

The dogs stand in their harnesses, eager and ready, as the cold morning air nips at your cheeks. When the snow hook is released, the team surges forward, and suddenly it’s just you, the dogs and the silence. All you can hear is paws on snow and the runners gliding beneath you. Ahead lies the Finnmark plateau, open and white as far as the eye can see.

On this journey, you are the musher. You follow part of the old postal route between Alta and Kautokeino, where mail carriers and travellers fought their way across the plateau by horse and reindeer for generations. From Gargia, you drive your own team up onto the plateau to Suolovuopmi mountain lodge, your base for two nights, a world away from everyday life, where the plateau and the dogs set the pace.

Out here, life runs on the dogs’ terms. Mornings start in the cold with feeding, harnessing and checking paws. The days are spent on the sled, crossing frozen lakes, windswept ridges and silent birch forest. You learn to read the terrain, hold your balance through the turns and trust the dogs in front of you, and they learn to trust you. In the evening, when the dogs are fed and curled up asleep, the warmth of the lodge and the stories of the day are waiting.

This isn’t a trip you watch from the back seat. These are three days on the runners, discovering what it truly means to be a musher on the Finnmark plateau.

Itinerary

Day 1: Gargia – Suolovuopmi. The adventure begins at Gargia Lodge, where you meet the guides and the dogs. You’ll learn how to drive, brake and steer the sled, and how to harness and care for the dogs. Once the team is ready and the dogs are eager to go, you set out along the old postal route onto the Finnmark plateau. Gradually the landscape opens up and grows quieter, and you start to feel the rhythm between you and your dogs. On arrival at Suolovuopmi mountain lodge, the dogs come first: they need food, water and a good place to rest. Then dinner and warmth await inside the lodge.

Day 2: Exploring from Suolovuopmi. A musher’s day starts with the dogs. After breakfast comes feeding, paw checks and harnessing before you head out into the terrain around Suolovuopmi. With a day’s experience behind you, you can take in more of the plateau around you: the light on the snow, the tracks in the terrain and the sound of the runners. Along the way you’ll stop for a break outdoors, as mushers always have. In the evening the dogs are cared for again, and the day ends at the lodge with dinner and good company.

Day 3: Suolovuopmi – Gargia. Your last morning on the plateau. The dogs are cared for and harnessed one final time before you head back towards Gargia. By now you know your team, and the dogs know you. Back at Gargia, you say goodbye to the dogs and the journey comes to an end.

Route, stages and timings are adapted to weather, trail conditions and the group, and may change along the way.

About the dogs

Our sled dogs are well cared for. You’ll take part in their daily care and get to know the dogs in your team, experiencing the plateau at a calm pace together with them.