Training in the mountains

Finally we have started the trips into the mountain areas of Indre Troms. This last week we have had good trips to Dærta and Altevatn. It was not plenty of snow, but acceptable, to Derta. At Altevatn the snow and trail conditions were really good. All the dogs seems happy after this hard training week, and no major injuries so far is also a good sign. In the barn we have re established the dog-room in the old stable, so that they can get maximum recovery after training on cold days.

Hard November soon over

Ideally a hard November should mean hard training for the dogs, but not this year. November has been hard of solid ice on roads and everywhere else making the training difficult. We have almost managed to do the planned training, but it has involved a lot of traveling to Kiruna, Skibotn, Dividalen and Øvre Sopero. Finally the snow has arrived again making doglife a little lighter... But we have also had some really good trips the last weeks. Cart training in the mountains of Skibotn and sledding in Soppero with expert mushers imported all the way from Australia. In Soppero we did long runs during the day and warmed up in the sauna afterwards.

Training updates

Snow has come and left us again, but we reached some good trips with the sled. I had one grate trip when I took the dogs moose hunting and we managed to get as close as 70 m to a moose. Only problem was that It was 200 m into the neighbour territory...
At the moment we are back on the atv training. I did a 32 km run with all 17 dogs this afternoon and they all seamed to do it easily.
Coming weekend we go to Nordreisa to train together with other teams from Tromsø, Norreisa and Alta and we look forward to this. Our goal is to manage 500 km of training in October, we will see if we get that far.... Most important is that the dogs seems healthy and eager to go on with the training.

Training starts

Even with a warm start of August we have managed to get started at the training and is almost on our schedule... The thing that I am most happy with is that the culture in the dogyard seems relaxed and good. All dogs behave well when they are running loose and the new, chaos style, line system is working good. The 17 dogs run on a line that is as long as a normal 10 dog string, without neck lines and with shorter pulling lines.  This gives good control of the team and the dogs must learn to behave in the harnessing/starting situation.  

Midnight sun and new trips

We had a few grate days on Senja last weekend, camping in Ballesvika with the sun just quickly dipping down into the ocean before rising again. 

At the same time as the winter season is definitely over, we have already started planning next season.  For those who want to learn more about training a team of sled dogs for the long races or look for a challenging trip we have a special offer in November and December. 

More info about the trip here at our website...

Springtime

The winter is coming to an end. Lotta did a grate Finnmarksløp in march and ended 23 with all the 8 dogs to the finish line. My self  I have had some grate trips to the mountains, specially last weekend when we found tracks from 4 bears that we probably had scared away. 

Hopefully we will get some more midnight sledding trips before all the snow is gone, but we are beginning to look at the atv again for summer training of the dogs. 

Next season we will have 17 dogs in training for Finnmarksløpet 1000 km which is our main goal in 2010 race season.

Indre Troms February Trip

We had a grate trip last week, nice cold weather and good snow conditions made the trip a good preparation for the upcoming  Finnmarksløpet. We started from Devddes and took the route Derta, Havga, Kiepan, Vouma, Gaskas, Innset. I think I have never seen so few Ptarmigan or tracks before, saw three birds and hardly no tracks, but a lot of reindeer in the area and more wolverine tracks than ever before. The dogs did a good job also, I had one adult lead dog in my team and the rest was youngsters. Pelle and Bård both got valuable lead dog training, braking trail in new terrain and keeping a straight course in the white mountains together with Momba. Kafka that i borrowed from Magne and Ragnhild also did a grate job, not bad doing this trip when in front of a sled for the second time and normally living life as a pet dog... Thanks to the team for a good week.

Handler work

After last weeks TQ I have not had the chance to run the dogs. Lotta is doing as much training and dog work as possible to prepare for Finnmarkslopet, and this weekend they did another 160 km. The Troms Quest went fine for the team. They did not perform extraordinary good, but they did a good job, and none of them seemed to tired after the race. They had the same speed on both legs, which is also a good sign.

It is strange not spending more time with the dogs, but it will be better. In a couple of weeks I will take them for a week in the mountains again. But first I will join Femundsløpet as handler for Olav om the 600km. I really look forward to that happening, first time to Femund and actually first time as race handler...

Working on the trails

The last and probably also coming week main focus has been on preparations for Troms Quest race next weekend. With a few exceptions the trail is now marked and a few teams has tried out the trail and the response is positive. If the trail conditions stay like it is now, my guess is winning times around 10 to 11 hours plus the rest time next week...

New Year - New wesite

Finally  I have managed to get a new website up and going. Check out the www.undervegs.no site.

Changing weather

Focus the last week has been planning our upcoming sleddog race, Troms Quest, but it is difficult to get going with trail braking when weather is changeing all the time. Arriving home from christmas holiday in Sweden the 29.dec we had zero snow and green fields, one week later we where swimming around in 1m of soft snow, and today it is warm and raining again... To morrow we go out to start the trail braking, and hopefully the conditions will stabilize and give us some good weeks of training and racing.  

On Troms Quest I will work as race leader, so I don´t get the chance to race my self. Aslak will take care of racing the adults on the 160 km while Our Australian Friend Donald McIntyre will race the youngsters on 55 km.