New video

I was looking after Tva this morning and managed to combine it with some more video experiments. The result can be found here... It is from my last trips with the dogs and from our moose.

Cold weather

The sun is back in the valley and in a few days it will come trough our kitchen window, and as usual the cold weather comes with the sun. The plan of the day was to go for a long training with the dogs, but with -30 c I will wait until to morrow.
We had grate trips Saturday and Sunday. Half way up Iselvdalen we found a dead reindeer, recently killed by a wolverine. It was a lot of fresh tracks around it and a King eagle was sitting on it when we passed on the way back.




Monday me and Siv guided a caving/skiing trip for 50 soldiers to Fjellfrøs grotta. It is always fascinating to go from -15 c outside and in to the constant +4 c of the cave.

More Internet mushing

More Internet mushing is coming up. Olav finished on a strong 21 place in Femundløpet, and kept me awake three nights to check race updates at the net. Yukon quest is starting this weekend with ten more days in front of my mac. Here is a link to YQ.

Internet mushing

Wasting most of my time in front of the computer these last days. Femundsløpet is on and I am following Olav closely. At the moment he is at the checkpoint Søvollen after 187 km, and he is NR 11. According to my calculations he has the second fastest racing time so far, which means that he has rested his team well. It is going to be some exciting hours ...
Follow the race at
http://www.femundlopet.no
http://www.retten.no/femundlopet/
http://qaqeerlaaaq.com/

Training status

Training the dogs video on this link..
The last long training started out more like swimming than sledding. With almost 1m fresh snow the first part was hard work, but Skare did his snow plow duty in lead. We spent 6 hours 40 km, not very fast, but good training. After 6 hour rest we went out again for 5 hours, then 6 more hours rest and at last a leg at 4 hours. All together we did 130 km, not very fare, but very good race preparations specially with the difficult conditions we had in the start. As you will see on the video the weather got better the second day. The dogs and the musher got necessary race and checkpoint practise like sleeping in the dog tent on the trail instead of home at the kennel. It was also good to see that there is some good new lead dogs coming up. Momba is taking more and more over as a responsible lead dog, it seams like he already has got the important skill of finding old disappeared trails and leading off trail. All together we now have 2800 km of training since we started this season in August.

Tommy and Ronny has come from Tromsø and stayed here for training the last two days, grate with visitors and good to keep the trail open...

To day is the start of Femundsløpet 600 km and to Morrow Femundsløpet 400 km starts. It is going to be a exciting weekend following the teams on Internet at www.femundlopet.no.

Specially I am very exited to see how Olav is doing representing the neighbourhood...

The winter has arrived for real with heavy snowing in many days. Not the best speed training for the dogs, but good for the dogs to practice trail braking... We where in Tromsø this weekend for a small race, but due to heavy snow fall the race ended up more like a social event than a serious competition. Anyway the dogs where performing well and we ended up at first place in the open class. Rapport from the race will be at the site of Tromsø Sled dog club web site http://www.ken-g.nu/tthk/ To night and the coming 24 hours the plan is to to a long training run with the dogs preparing them for the challenges they will meet at the race. I will do a 6 hours on and 6 hours off training run for about 30 hours with resting on the trail. Depending on snow conditions and speed I hope to cower about 180 km. Coming back with rapport...

New year and a new life situation. 3 January Tuva arrived as a new member in our small family... We are looking forward to a lot of exciting adventures together in the future. As a real norwegian she was delivered with skies.
This has made the training a bit more home based the last two weeks, but Aslak (brother and second part of the Undervegs racing team) has helped out with the training. He raced the five young dogs and Brutus in Kiruna last weekend and they did a good job. His blog from training and adventures is at http://askeladdturer.blogspot.com/