2 more weeks of our main-season have passed - fast as usual!
The first group of Bordertrail started out in week nbr 3 and all 4 participants had a nice week with normal temperatures and almost perfect trails. Some parts of our trail-net start to get harder pressed only now, what means that the dogs had a tough job and the mushers had to support them on long parts. The Koskikierros-Loop in Ruunaa was left out because of that - the next bordertrail-group will try it again.
Then in week 4 we had to take out our real warm clothing... temperatures dropped to real -30 C, combined with wind and humidity it was felt like -38 to -40 C. A bit cold... Because of that we shortened some programs and adjusted the tours a bit to keep dogs and guests happy. The group of Bears Trail spent only 1 night in the cabins, but got an additional daytrip from/to lodge. The Winterweek-Polar-Group was easy to adjust by simply switching the days off a bit, according to the coldest days. And the Winterweek-Plus-Group was hiking to the cabin for overnighting there, instead of driving by sleds. A nice change for the guides to have a cabin-night with only 3 indoor-dogs...
All guests of the past week were really spoiled with sunshine and perfect light-conditions in the frosted, snowcovered forests! Cold but beautiful! Days are getting longer, sun is getting more powerful!
Coming Thursday, January 31st, our volunteers Flavia and Melissa will leave us. Flavia was part of the team since September, part of the complete autumn training, puppy education, season preparations, season start and high-season weeks - she was a full-time-team-member and even got out as co-guide a few times. Melissa was with us for only 5 weeks, because of her studies, but she proved to be a reliable teammember as well, doing jobs in the background and giving us more time on the front. We will miss both of them a lot in the coming weeks and both of them earn our deepes thanks! The team had 12 persons and was unusual big, but nobody here would have preferred to do the last weeks without Flavia and Melissa! A huge TANK YOU to both of you and have a good start back in Switzerland!