I'd been awake on and off during the night and it was incredibly light from about 3 am, the night time darkness didn't seemed to have lasted long before it was time to get up. Mind you I think it's from next month when they have the midnight sun up here. After last night's "loo" performance we decided to get up about 5 am and get it out of the way before anyone started stirring. As I reached to get our boots noticed the laces frozen and they were full of snow - we'd forgotten about "snowing" inside the tent due to condensation. Our inner boots were soaking and I was really worried about this as we'd have to spend the whole day in these until we finished about 9.30 pm. We didn't want to put our socks straight into soaking wet boots so Karen found some spare plastic bags which we tied onto our feet so we could nip outside for 5 minutes. Once outside the tent, our dogs must have thought great - time to get up and started to howl, lots of frantic Shusshing noises and patting followed to try and get them to settle so we could at least go in peace without waking the whole of the camp up. Mission accomplished it was time to get breakfast on the go (we had little pots of oats with apple and cinnamon, that we just added boiling water to) and then try and dry off our liners as much as possible over the stove.

Collecting water for cooking porridge & drinks

After breakfast we pottered around outside the tent, still not much movement around the camp. We chat to Jeremy briefly and then to Sue before making a start on what is to become our morning routine, packing away our stuff, putting down the tent, loading the sleds, harnessing the dogs, taking them off the stake out line and hitching them to the sleds. This doesn't sound much but it always seems to take at least 2 hours. It's a lovely morning; very sunny and we feel extremely warm doing our jobs, we are expecting it to be a beautiful day again.

Time to hitch up - walking my dog to the sled

Time is inconsequential, we go when everything has been done and we are ready, we will stop only if the weather permits and we arrive at our next camp area when the weather and the day's events permit. Tore and Tove have about three possible camp locations in mind at any time; a long distance one if everything goes ok, a mid distance one if the weather looks a bit doubtful and a shorter distance one if the weather doesn't look good at all. Today the weather looks as though its going to be really good and the plan is to maybe travel to the long distance camp.

Laurie, Anne & Therese

Alan and Peter (My dogs sitting nice and quiet for a while)

Whilst putting our tents down a chap came by on his skidoo; he was huge, and looked like something out of a Mad Max film with his long coat flying and very irate expression on his face. We later learned that he was part of a group of Sami reindeer herders who were moving a huge herd of reindeer to different feeding grounds. The reindeer were just the other side of the hill and racing down and due to be crashing through this little wooded area in as little as 15 minutes. Apparently a member of his team had been down and spoke to Tove and Tore earlier but he had said as long as we moved all the sleds to one side and kept hold of the dogs it would be ok, but this chap, most likely the "main man" was going bolistic saying (more or less) that was not possible and we all had to get out of there immediately unless we wanted to be crushed in a stampede.

Get the hell out of dodge - Mad Max with Tove and Tore

Lined up and ready to leave

Fortunately most people had done the bulk of their packing up at this point but it meant things were hurriedly getting thrown into sledges and the line up for setting off was a bit haphazard. It was rather a rush job getting the group out of the camp and what originally promised good terrain for a smooth morning start somehow ended up being the opposite with pandemonium ensuing. I was right at the front so it was difficult to know what exactly went on but looking back it seemed to involve two runaway sleds and a loose dog. This was the only thing I hated about the trip, seeing runaway sleds plowing into others with dogs getting all tangled or a loose dog on the run, your heart just sinks.

Today there were lots of mishaps amongst the group, sleds seemed to be overturning every 10 minutes - I'm not sure why, it was difficult to tell, this was supposed to be an relatively straight forward stretch. After the easy stretch there was quite a bit where we had to help by running uphill to help the dogs out, this was particularly difficult where the snow was extremely soft and deep. We got nowhere fast and embarrasingly did about 1 km in 1 hour!! Fortunately I only came a cropper once and this was due to a runaway sled ploughing into the back of me when I was going downhill. It turned out to be a beautiful, warm day and yet again the scenery was superb set against a lovely blue sky. We stopped for lunch break for 1/2 hour at the border point where Norway, Finland and Sweden meet. We saw some cross country skiers and took their photo and they took photos of us.

Border Point - Finland, Norway, Sweden

Quick 1/2 hour lunch stop at the border point

What a difference a few hours makes - the weather takes a sudden turn for the worst. There are some hair raising parts to this afternoon as we had icy blasts across the mountain tops and lots of steep downhill sections (sleds constantly overturning and resulting pandemonium). Due to our poor speed and the rapid change in weather Tore and Tove decide we can't make any of the usual camps and Tore felt the best option was to try a new route that they hadn't done before. In total disarray we finally stop. We are spread out all over the place. The wind has picked up and is howling more than the dogs. Dave & Sue's thermometer records minus 15 degrees.

There seems no good place to set up the tent. Although Karen and myself didn't have much choice where to put our tent, simply where out sleds ground to a halt, it turned out to be an ok spot after all. It was a bit of a pain setting up - the snow was extremely soft at this point and everytime you moved you sunk a good two to three feet. This meant a lot and I mean a lot of hard work stomping the ground trying to compact the snow before we could even think of setting our tent down. It took a good hour to do this and by the time we'd finished compacting the ground it started snowing quite heavily and the wind had really whipped up which didn't help when trying to peg the tent down with our "twigs". On more than one occasion we thought it was transforming into a kite!! Routine went a bit out of the window this evening, the dogs were given dry food by a few volunteers and they struggling to get to some of the dogs which were staked out high up on steep slopes due to the impossible deep snow. Dave got stuck in the snow and Tove spent 15 minutes trying to dig him out.

Team briefing lasted all of 5 minutes as by now it was getting near blizzard conditions. Mood extremely low, most people feeling pretty unhappy with the afternoon's turn of events, very quiet with tired and frustrated faces all round.

After an eternity went by setting up camp and all chores out of the way, we were ready to clamber into our sleeping bags and eat our evening meal - tonight another fish type stew, creamier than last nights but equally tasty. Wind is howling, tent is shaking vigorously, bit worried tent might blow away but as we'd managed to rig it up to the sleds thought it should be pretty secure. Feel human now snuggled up in our bags and having eaten a good meal. We have socks and boot inners strung all over the tent, looks like a Chinese laundry. We have plenty of fuel so keep our stove going so that we can dry all our things. We look across at all the other tents and they are in darkness, we think we are the only ones still up. After the little lesson last night of snowing inside the tent, I put my inner boots, laces in the bottom of my sleeping bag along with my camera, batteries, chocolate for tomorrow's snacks, wet wipes and umpteen other little things I don't want rock solid by morning. Around 11 pm we finally settle down to sleep.