Before I forget – yes, Kiruna is north of the Arctic Circle. Sunrise this morning was 0955 and sunset 1344 giving us a grand total of 3 hours and 49 minutes of true daylight. That would make it also obviously why as I start writing this about 1515 that it is quite dark outside.
getting organized before sunrise
And it was along the river and through the old growth forest that we went.
old growth and charging sled dogs
As you might note – the species of pine/fir here are tall, slender and have short branches which gather the maximum sun possible and decrease the chances of breakage from snow build up.
after a couple of hours and several photo stops it was lunch break. The dogs
are two teams of 12. The couple who provided the teams today have about 60 dogs in total. Lars mentioned that the dogs much prefer racing (which involves a lot of running and not pulling all that much weight) to today’s task which is pulling a sledge with 3-4 passengers. The alternate mode of transport today was a snowmobile –
which is Peter’s personal vehicle complete with trailer for gear.
and for the birders:
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- a jay
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- and an arctic tit
