Travel and Adventure by Various Travel Authors

By Steve Bergsman

Amanda was the type of young woman with whom you could entrust your life. But even Amanda has bad days – or nights -- and I just happened to be with her on one of them.

Above the Arctic Circle in the Norwegian wilderness they take their dogsled runs at night -- not surprising since at times there are 24 hours of darkness each day. I was there at the end of winter, when daylight is strong and evening shade doesn't drop until about 6 p.m. The ride was to begin at 6:30 pm.

I drove to the run from the city of Tromso, arriving about two hours early. It had been snowing steadily since I arrived 48 hours before, and the temperature had stayed below freezing but only by a few degrees.

It would get colder as the night went on, and the flurries would thicken.

Amanda, who was tending to the sled dogs, asked if I wanted to help. I laid down my backpack and helped her sort out lines, preparing the two sleds we were going to use that night. As the two other guests, Jamie and Marcus from South Africa, arrived, Amanda showed me how to harness the dogs, pull them to the sled and attach them to the line. Wrangling the dogs takes a lot of energy.

By the time everyone was ready, it was 7 p.m. and the woods were in full darkness. By this time Amanda and I had been out in the elements almost three hours, and we still had a two-hour dogsled run ahead of us.

Amanda knew her dogs well, and this allowed her quickly to teach Jamie, Marcus and me the finer points of driving a sled, which we would all have to do at some point on our journey. Amanda would take the lead team with me on her sled to start, and the other team would have Jamie as the driver and Marcus on the sled. The second team lead dogs would instinctively know to follow the first team.

Like miners, we donned strap-on headlamps, now bright white digital, and off we went, but it didn't take long for things to start to go wrong. First, Jamie and Marcus flipped their sled. It wasn't serious, so they dusted themselves off, got back on and once again we were on the move. However, we soon discovered that one of the upper braces on their sled was cracked. Amanda repaired it on the spot.

About 10 minutes later, we had a situation with the dogs on the Jamie-Marcus team. A few of them had turned on each other, so Amanda waded into the fracas.

"What you don't do," she told me later, "is put your hand into the middle of a dog fight and pull them apart because, while the dogs would never bite a human knowingly, in their snarling and tearing at each other, an inadvertent bite might happen."

Pulling the fighting dogs apart resulted in a nip on her hand. The malcontent dog was moved to our sled in exchange for one of calmer temperament.

I was now driving the second team. At about 8:30 we stopped once again. Jamie and Marcus stood up to stretch their legs while Amanda took a look at my lead dogs. Suddenly, her team, which had been sitting calmly, got spooked and took off in a mad dash, ripping the sled from her grip. She ran after them, but the dogs were far too fast. After first disappearing into the darkness, she returned about five minutes later, still at a run. She threw her jacket to the ground, took command of the second team and off she went in pursuit.

Jamie, Marcus and I stood in the darkness, our faces lit up by headlamps. The temperature was getting colder, the snow was blowing harder and by now I'd been outdoors for more than four hours. When she didn't return after about 20 minutes, we started walking along the dogsled trail in the direction Amanda had gone. We figured it was better to keep moving than stand around getting cold. As we trudged along, we were also thinking this was going to be a very tough night for all of us.

But then we caught a break. We happened upon a tiny reindeer herder's hut. The door was unlocked, and inside we found candles and matches. If the night got long, there was even a wood-burning stove.

We hunkered down, with each of us taking five-minute shifts standing outside with our headlamp burning, keeping an eye out for Amanda. By 9:30, we began to get concerned. We had the cabin, we were going to be fine, but we didn't know if Amanda was injured or the dogs were hurt. Numerous ugly possibilities crossed our minds.

Finally, Marcus, who was on outside shift, called to us. In the distance we could see the light from Amanda's headlamp. When she pulled up, her sweater was covered in snow and she had lost her gloves, but she had recovered her dogs. After putting together a double team, she managed to get back with the sled and dogs intact.

Working barehanded, Amanda redid all the knots, re-established the two dogsled teams and once again we were on our way. We finally arrived at civilization at 11 pm. Amanda would never admit she was cold, but I was. And for all of us it had been a very long night.

IF YOU GO

Outfitters: Lyngsfjord Adventure, www.lyngsfjord.com

Site: An area about 1 1/2 hours outside Tromso called Camp Tamok

Accommodations: Most visitors stay in Tromso and just come out for the dogsledding, then return. I had spent the previous night in Tromso at the boutique Amalie Hotel, www.amalie-hotel.no. The night of our ride I stayed the night at Camp Tamok, sleeping in a Sami tent. The next day I pushed on to the town of Lyngseidet, staying at the guest house Stigen Vertshus, www.lyngsalpeprodukter.no.