Day 5

Usual morning, dog feeding, poop scooping and breakfast preparation. It can’t be wrong to tell an almost complete stranger you love him when he arrives at your cabin door with pancake mix, lemon juice and syrup for Shrove Tuesday. Rebecca ate enough to be allowed to continue with us, as last night she was within minutes of being transported back to base.
We had a fairly short day’s sledding to give us time to stop for lunch. We sledded for about an hour over a frozen lake with only one minor incident – Jennifer thought I should overtake her, but my dogs couldn’t really be bothered, so there was a comedy slo-mo moment where she then let her foot off the brake for a split second and her sled took off without her, leaving Jennifer face down in the snow. They must have run for at least 1/2km before anyone could stop them, and Jennifer had to arrive by dog taxi to get onboard again.
We stopped for lunch in the middle of the lake on a little island. Magical! There was light snow that looked like little crystals in the air, making everything sparkle. There was a teepee on the island with reindeer-skinned benches and a central fireplace where Milos threw together a salmon stew (veggie cupasoup for me).
After lunch we set off for another short but mostly arduous journey to our lodge for the night. I’d been thinking how the uphills hadn’t been hard work at all, but that was soon to change! We had several large, long hills to go up. My dogs gave me several filthy looks when i had to pause in between spurts of running uphill, to rest on the sled. Uno is great at giving me a scathing look any time I obviously do something wrong, including too much braking, or not enough breaking. Somehow the downhills are more terrifying than anything else, as you need to control the sled round bends at speed, while braking enough to stop your sled crashing into the back of the dogs but not so much that you lose control on a bend. We all made it!
Tonight has been spent in the Wilderness lodge, and has been wonderful. No electricity yet again, so more candlelit evenings. The dogs all have little kennels to themselves, but still have the same feeding requirements! We’re experts at lighting fires now to either cook, or boil water for us or the dogs’ frozen food mix. We had to share dinner with another group staying onsite in a smaller cabin, since we had the only kitchen. They did the washing up (badly, according to Lindsay and Carrie).
Have just come back from using the sauna…wonderful to have washed my hair for the first time in nearly a week! All my joints are aching now, and i’ve lost the ability to use my knees it seems, but muscles seem otherwise fine. I’m looking forward to going to the gym on Friday, but only to spend forever in the hot tub to un-knarl my fingers from their claw like clenched grip.
Tomorrow is the end of our sledding. We’re going to get back to Mushers lodge in time for lunch, then head to the ice hotel for a celebratory drink

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