Finnmarksløpet reviewed
Eight dogs out from the start, and eight dogs across the finish line!  First British woman either to take part or to complete!

The team.
Melanie Clegg (musher)
The dogs:  Milla, Susi, Pirjo, Ruusa, Katie, Riku, Seppo and Baskabut's Bessi (on loan)
Vidar Aastrøm (handler/support vehicle)

Alta - Jotka 1.  53 km, 3h 47m, 14 km/h.  13 minutes faster than planned.
I was expecting loads of noise around the start, but I was so focused on getting the dogs ready that I don't remember hearing much else.  Lots of help getting the team to the start line, a few words over the loudspeaker from Hans Petter, and we were off.  The whole street was lined with so many people that it seemed to take an eternity to pass them all.  Hold the speed right down, let the dogs find a relaxed pace, and enjoy the first leg.  Fantastic scenery in the canyon of the Alta river, then no time to think on the long and steep Detsika hill.  Weather like an Easter holiday.  Lots of people along the trail, and dogs on leads, here and there.  Why?  Was it a dog party?  Most were ignored, but others were too good to resist! 

I looked back a couple of times, and it was like watching aircraft on approach.  Dog team after dog team, most giving way to each other when there wasn't much room to pass, but others were more impatient and pushed past, regardless.  Ah, let them go!  Good to eventually be the last span, so we could run our own race.  A fair bit of sidewind saw us heading for each and every way-marker.  It takes effort to keep the sled on course when the sled-bag is acting as a sail.  Press helicopter overhead.  No problem for the dogs.

Stop time:  4h 20.  Was meant to be 4 hours, but I was slow getting the dogs ready.  Difficult to sit still and wait.  The last time I sat and did nothing for a few hours was lost in my deepest memory.  Five of us from the same club had our picture taken.  Extraordinary meeting?  Discussion about the hill into Skoganvarre.  Should we remove the back lines from the dogs, so they wouldn't pull?

Jotka 1 - Skoganvarre.  72 km, 4h 46m, 15.1 km/h.  1h 14m faster than planned.
Out in the dark, at the same time as Arne Liaklev in the 1000 km race.  Did I want him to wait for me at the renowned hill into Skoganvarre?  No - he should run his own race. 

Don't remember much about the leg.  It seemed to take ages, but actually went quite fast, and the last section was best to forget.  Aware of the big mountains of Stabbursdalen, but nothing much to see in the dark.  The wind must have been blowing snow, otherwise I would have seen more. 

Always on edge, waiting for the famous drop.  Felt like I was holding the dogs back on every little uphill, in case this was the one.  Where was the drop?  Eventually, we came down a couple of stony hills.  Was that it?  Was that all it was?  I mistakenly thought we were over the worst, but we'd not even begun.  Thoughts turned to the race plan that I had in my pocket, and I was busy studying this when a yellow warning sign suddenly loomed up.  Too late!  THIS was the hill, and I wasn't ready for it!    The sled slid sideways and down on an icy patch, and I threw it over on its side, just to halt progress.  The dogs were ahead of me, lined up over the edge of a steep downhill slope.  Only one thing to do - crab the sled sideways up onto the trail, tip it upright again, and jump on the brake. 

The worst thing about being the last sled down is that the track is pretty worn out.  There was a deep, sled-wide trench in amongst the rocks.  Great enough if you manage to hit this straight on, but not all the dogs want to run in a trench.  All in all, a bit of an uncontrolled descent, something which I don't particularly enjoy.  If I did, I'd have taken up bungee-jumping or off-piste skiing.  If I'd been one for screaming, I'd have probably screamed once or twice.  The dogs weren't happy, either - tails straight up in the air as a warning.

Two trails across the lake to the checkpoint.  Like being in the middle of a runway.  I chose the right track, but it wasn't easy to see.  The checkpoint was even less easy to find, with two enormous beams of light being shone directly towards incoming teams.  Checkpoint?  Prison camp?!?  Checkpoint officials with acres of time to see me heading across the lake, but nevertheless, not ready with a parking place for us.  Small things that make the difference between a happy and a narked musher.   

Stop time:  6h 59, one minute less than planned!  Hooray!

Skoganvarre - Levajok.  88 km, 7h 36m, 11.6 km/h.  2h 24m faster than planned!
Daytime mushing without a headtorch - always a bonus!  When I went out to get the dogs ready, the vet said that they were obviously raring to go, as they were busy exchanging pleasantries with the neighbouring team.

Out on the tail of Arne Liaklev, yet again.  Up from the lake, across the road, and then an hour of climbing through woodland trails that were covered in ice-melt.  Mentally tiring for the dogs, always having to find the safest route on and across sloping ice, and tiring for me, too, the sled slipping and sliding here and there.  So much for a pleasant trip.  We tailed Arne at a distance as there wasn't much point getting in front of a larger team.  A couple of steep hills later and we were up on the tops.

Tops are never tops until you're finally on the way down again, and we were well up amongst the highest mountains in the county.  The dogs ran fine, and we were soon heading down the course of the Levajok river.  Sun shining, exciting chunks of river ice to look at, soft 'sugar' snow to wade through, and not the last team to Levajok! 

Thanks to Levajok for remembering that they'd promised me a free meal, way back in October!    Yum! 

Stop time:  8h 40 - 40 minutes more than planned.  Slow at getting ready.

Levajok - Karasjok.  86 km, 7h 49, 11.0 km/h.  2h 11m faster than planned (but see below).
Moonlight mushing on the mighty Tana river.  Would have been nice to turn off the headtorch, but I didn't want to miss any of the reflective marker posts.  It should be fairly easy to follow the course of a frozen river, but when the river's wide and you constantly have the risk of ending up in the neighbouring country (Norway to the right, Finland to the left) with the resulting quarantine, it pays to keep alert!

Alert is one thing.  Awake is another.  Blimey, it was difficult to keep my eyes open.  The opening miles were okay, as there were many patches of ice to cross or steer around, but as the night went on, my eyes closed several times.  Mushing on reflex reaction alone!  A couple of times, I was on the way to keeling over to the left (always the left), so that gave me a kick start.  Even in a situation where it's so important to hang onto the team, the pull of sleep is so strong that you just can't keep your eyes open.    The dogs were running a bit too quick to kick, so I juggled between nibbling dried reindeer heart, pistachio nuts and coconut, and singing.  It would go well for a while, then a new wave of MUST SLEEP would wash over me.  I'm absolutely convinced that I must have fallen completely asleep on the sled at some point, the dogs must have stopped and tangled up the lines, only for me to waken up and think that the whole thing had just happened.  How else to explain for what I thought was good racing speed on a flat river, only to find that we'd taken ages to the next checkpoint?

Each leg of the race had a marker post at the 20 km until next checkpoint point.  I'd not looked at the map before setting out (only one route on the river), so I'd not registered that there was still a long way to go from the point where the river divides towards Finland.  I was actually on the phone to Vidar, to say that I was nearly in Karasjok, when I saw the marker post and realised that I had ages to go.  Talk about a let-down.

We'd run all night and not seen a soul, then suddenly, after the 20km post, Dag Broch came up behind us.  According to the race times, he set off from Levajok about an hour after us, and had an average speed of almost 2 km/h faster than us.  And he only had 5 dogs!  I must have fallen asleep!  The rest of the leg consisted of Dag overtaking us, stopping, me wondering whether to overtake him, doing so, my dogs stopping, and so on.  All momentum lost!  Much easier to race alone!

When I finally got to Karasjok, I admitted to Vidar that I was disheartened about the way the leg had gone, so all credit to him for bucking up my spirits.  A big minus, however, to the checkpoint guys, for not pointing out the glaringly obvious bales of straw to me.  I ended up having to hump and dump a 20kg bale of straw some distance across non-flattened snow, rather than heaving it up on the sled on arrival.  Checkpoint routine went out of synch, but it was good to get a smile and a hug from Hanne Marte, one of the vets!

One of the best checkpoint sleeps!  A bed of straw, a warm tent, and all clothes bone dry when I needed them.

Stop time:  8h 36 - 36 minutes more than planned.  Slow again and stressed because of getting fully kitted up before getting the dogs ready.  I was therefore all hot and bothered.
 
Karasjok - Jergul.  69 km, 6h 11m, 11.2 km/h.  1 hour faster than planned.
A bit of tried-and-tested territory for the first stretch.  Fortunately, the dogs have never run into Sven Engholm's yard from the Karasjok side, so went on by without problems.  Always a pleasure to mush from the Karasjok river, up through the pine woods at Assebakti, then higher and higher until the pine trees are replaced with birch, then finally no trees at all, and you're up on the vidda, the plateau.  It was almost 4 years to the day that I took my first sled trips from Sven Engholm's place, and it was then that we took a three-day trip up to Ravnastua. 

It was already dark when we got to Ravnastua this time, and I was met with the sight of I don't know how many pairs of doggy eyes reflecting in the headtorch!  No surprise, therefore to see Christel Finne at the door of one of the huts.  I shouted a greeting, the dogs tried to dodge behind the neighbouring cabin, I ran forward and growled at them, we carried on, and that was that!  No time for socialising.  No time for Oskar to play the accordian or for Christel to dance a polka! 

Before we got right up on the tops, I stopped to put jackets on the dogs.  Unfortunately, the whole process is associated with checkpoints and rest, so it was no surprise to see the dogs trying to bed down.  As luck would have it, a party of snowmobiles came by, requesting directions to Mollesjok.  It was enough to get the dogs moving again.  Phew!  No stopping now!

The 500km race heads down to Jergul, whereas the 1000km race carries straight on towards Jotka.  I'd made a mental note of how long I should expect between Ravnastua and the turning for Jergul, but I needn't have worried.  The turning was marked out with enough reflective markers that it could have been the proverbial Christmas tree.  The only thing I couldn't remember was how far it then was to the checkpoint.  I never saw a 20km marker, so it was a real surprise to suddenly find ourselves heading down into birch trees, seeing house lights, crossing the main road, and ending up on the river.  The dogs wanted to go left.  I honestly thought that we should head right into the checkpoint, but I let them have their way, and rightly so, as there were the reflective vests of the checkpoint personnel.  Clever dogs!

Stop time:  8h 45 - 45 minutes more than planned.  Some of the dogs hadn't eaten when we first came in, so I broke my sleep and tried later with a second round of feeding.  When I was due to get up, I was so tired that I just had to have an extra 20 minutes.  

Jergul - Jotka 2.  80 km, 7h 23m, 10.8 km/h.  1h 37m faster than planned.
Daylight mushing again, but still not enough to hold the sleep monster at bay.  This leg should have been relatively straightforward.  Note - should have been.  Decided to try Riku and Ruusa in front.  We managed a few miles before Riku was all too besotted with the odours of the females behind him, so that was the end of that trial.  Back on track again, with a fair stretch on the river before crossing under the main road.  There wasn't quite the same concentration in the team that we'd had until now, but even the appearance of a loose, yapping dog didn't phase them.  Maybe I should have thought more about my own concentration....

Beautiful swirls in the ice by the Iesjoki bridge.  Must have been eddies of water underneath that had caused them.  Sunlight and patterns on the ice.  All very nice, but no time to stop.  We came up from the river, up to the cabins at Suossjavre, and headed back down to the river.  Now I'd been here, almost a month before, to train the dogs in the trail.  The worrying sight of a white van, parked behind the cabins could have distracted the dogs, but the dogs saw that it was another make than my Toyota, and kept going.  Down onto the river, then.  Easy, this - we'd been here before!

Rubbish.  With no markers to state anything to the contrary, we dropped down onto the river and headed left.  It wasn't long before we were faced with sheet ice and ice-melt to splash through.  Not many marker sticks, I thought.  Suddenly up a bank and across a side road.  This was new.  Daft, the way the mind works when it's tired.  Instead of thinking that I'd taken a wrong turning, I thought instead that the trail had been diverted around something or another.  I made sure that the dogs couldn't go anywhere, and headed off to look for signs of the trail.  There was nothing behind us, further up the river, so the trail had to be ahead.  I caught the faint sight of a birch marker twig up ahead, so that way it was.  We continued a bit further before I came to my senses.  Out with the map, out with the GPS, and it was time to find out where we really were....  And that was heading westwards towards Kautokeino!  I turned the team around and headed back to the river.  Once we got there, I saw the race marker post almost immediately.  Why I hadn't seen it earlier, I don't know, but neither was there anything there to indicate a turning.  Oh well, no use in being annoyed - just keep on going.  Most of an hour lost, though.

The trail was almost unrecognisable from the one we'd trained on, some weeks before.  All the new snow from then had been blown away, and the trail was mostly ice.  At Mollesjok, we were met by yet another loose dog.  This time, the dog came right up to the team, springing rings around us and yapping like mad.  My dogs were looking in all directions, trying to follow the path of the loose dog, but to all credit, they kept their forward momentum.  After a couple of hundred yards of waving a free leg at the loose dog, it ran back to its home, happy that it had chased a team of huskies away from its territory.  I was just glad that it hadn't started to attack the team.

The dogs were starting to show signs of being tired.  It was all right on the stretches with open water or wide river, but as soon as the dogs realised that they were within reach of deeper snow to the side of the trail, they were wanting to stop and rest.  I had been stopping at intervals to allow the dogs to grab bites of snow, but now I had to be careful that they wouldn't just stop.
 
The crossing of Iesjavri was without complication.  A small, black dot on the horizon turned out to be two girls on skis, pulling their belongings on sleds.  We exchanged greetings, but I didn't dare let the dogs stop.  I had switched on the GPS, to work out both distance and time remaining to Jotka, but every time I checked the display, we seemed to have made no progress.  The time remaining never seemed to alter, until at last, I switched the machine off in frustration.  I must have worked really hard to keep the dogs going, but when we finally arrived at Jotka, the dogs gave a final spurt, and it looked to the waiting crew like things were going well.  I held my arms aloft, shouted 'Hooray', and signed in.

Stop time:  1h 41 - 41 minutes more than planned.  The time just vanished.  I gave the dogs a good drink of water and spent what felt like a couple of minutes waiting in the crew hut, only to be told that I'd then already been there over an hour.  Time to put booties on the dogs and get going...!

Jotka 2 - Alta.  53 km, 8h 37m, 6.2 km/h.  4h 7m slower than planned. 
... Getting going was a real problem.  Each dog in turn wanted to stop and pee.  I let them do so on the way down to the lake, but it obviously wasn't enough.  There had been enough wind at Jotka that I didn't want the dogs to rest there and stiffen up.  I thought I'd let them have a break later on, once we got into the trees.  Why I didn't just take them round the back of one of the farm buildings, I don't know.  Tiredness and inexperience, I suppose.  The thought just didn't hit me.

We took ages to cross the first lake.  Over onto the second lake, and it wasn't long before some of the dogs wanted to stop and pee again.  They usually do this on the run, but they'd drunk a fair bit at Jotka, and I thought it would be easier to let all of them pee at once.  Unfortunately, the dogs that didn't pee, sat down to wait.  Some of them looked really tired - their eyes closing as they waited.  After various attempts to get them going again, there was only one thing to do, and that was let them rest.  Not much good running in front of the sled when the leaders aren't quite sure what's going on, and get overtaken by the others.  It just leads to tangles in the lines and more waiting.

Three hours went by.  Three hours in the middle of a lake, where there was no protection from the wind.  It would have been better, had we stayed longer at Jotka.  The irony was cruel.  I removed the dogs' booties, sat a while on the ice next to the lead dogs, then dug out my survival bag and crept inside that.  The survival bag helped, but I didn't feel much warmer.  Time to drag the length of sleeping mat out of the sled and use that, too.  What a great idea for a party game!  Already standing with a body-length (and more) sack over my head, I then had to get the sleeping mat inside the sack, all done with the wind blowing.  Solution:  roll up the mat and 'post' it through the opening that I'd made to see out.  Stage one completed, it only remained to waddle like a penguin forward to the windward side of the lead dogs, drop to my knees onto the sleeping mat, then fall the rest of the way down.  Very ungainly, but practical.  I made a mental note to practise getting in and out of the survival bag in the stillness of a summer garden....

I let the time pass by exchanging text messages and phone calls with the race office, with Vidar, my handler, and with a few other mushers.  So thanks to Krister, Åshild and Jonny-Roger for the helpful tips!  The idea of withdrawing from the race never once entered my head.  What would be the point, when we'd come so far?  Just a question of waiting, and we'd get to Alta.   

Every so often, one or two of the dogs would get up, shake itself, and settle back down again.  There was no other movement on the lake.  I wondered if I should ring the guys at Jotka and see if they would drive a snowmobile past, in case it would help.  At any rate, they could ferry me a cup of coffee!  I let the idea go.  We had more or less trained alone, the whole season, we had more or less raced alone so far, so why should we now try and hitch a ride?  Besides, I wasn't sure if we might be disqualified.

Eventually, I heard more than just one or two dogs get up to shake themselves.  I decided to waddle back to the sled, pack up and have another go.  What timing!  I had just closed the zip of the sled bag when the whole team of dogs jumped to their feet and started barking.  They were raring to go!  Up with the anchor, and we were off at a real gallop!  Up on the mountain road were the headlights of a car.  I was convinced that one of the mushers had driven up from Alta, and was sitting on the mountain road with a husky.  In reality, the car was away to the left of the road crossing, up by a cabin.  Whether or not there was a dog there, I'll never know, but something fired up my dogs, and I'm grateful for that!

I didn't dare reduce the pace of the dogs, now that we were moving again.  There was already far less snow that when we'd raced in the opposite direction, only two days previously, and what was left of the trail was either hard snow or bare ground.  I sent word to the race office that we were in motion again, and concentrated on the job in hand.  We were so close to Alta, and on proven trails, but I felt like I was walking on eggshells.  I don't even think I sang to the dogs.  Maybe I was holding my breath. 

We mushed up and over the mountain tops, came through nearly the whole of the Buolomaila area of private cabins, and were on the way up the last hill before dropping down at Detsika when the dogs wanted to rest in the deep snow amongst the trees.  I urged them on.  We carried on down the Detsika hill, right until I had to negotiate the sled around a tree and gave the dogs a minute to catch their breath.  Nearly another rest-stop!  Get them going again.  Don't panic.  The stretch on the Alta river went fine.  No trees and deep snow to tempt the dogs!  Up from the river, and we were nearly there.  I honestly thought I'd taken a wrong turning from the river, right until I saw two helpful souls manning the road-crossing.  Just a couple of fields and the big hill by the school to go, and the end would be in sight!

Glory be.  The last hill is steep enough without the dogs being tempted for the very last time by trees and snow.  Please not now, dogs, we're only yards from the finish!  It was hard work, but I got the team up the hill.  By this time, I was pretty fed up, and didn't want any fuss.  I switched off my headtorch and tried to race the last few yards by stealth.  The torchlight from the school groundsman tried to distract the dogs, but we made it up to the pedestrian street and to the finish.  Someone had made sure that both the whole of the race office and the nearby pub turned out to greet us.  I tried to be grateful, but I was really just glad to be done with the whole ordeal.  Vidar was on hand with loads of salmon snacks for the dogs.  I was presented with a fine knife for being the 'last man standing', and then the proudest moment - the slate plate to announce that I was no longer a Finnmarksløpet rookie.  That was enough to raise a smile from me! 

Total time taken:  3 days, 13 hours, 10 minutes. 

The dogs had given everything they had, and I am very proud of them.  When I was interviewed, right after the finish, I wasn't sure if I'd take part again - it would depend on the snow conditions.  Time is a healer, however.  Prospect Huskies will be back!