At home with the huskies
In Finland there’s no better place for winter activities than Pielinen, a 900-sq-km lake in the province of North Karelia. Our first morning was bright and chilly, sunlight sparkling on drifts of fresh powder. The lake wasn’t frozen enough to support safely the weight of the seven hyperactive children (aged five to 11) in our party, so ice fishing would have to wait. We drove instead to a nearby farm, where wild boar and reindeer looked on bemused as the kids cavorted in the snow like a pack of highly wired wolf cubs.
Several family operators offer guided activity breaks to Finnish or Swedish Lapland. Typically, they include dog sledging, snowmobiling, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing and ice fishing. More of a polar pot-pourri than a full-blown Arctic expedition, these trips aim to give you a gentle introduction to everything. We experienced moments of calm – snuggled in rugs on a sleigh or slurping bowls of salmon broth by the fire – but most of the time it was full-on, non-stop snowy shenanigans.
Our first activity was cross-country skiing, which reduced the children briefly to penguin-shuffling mode. Inevitably, the first session deteriorated into a hysterical tangle of limbs, skis and poles – but they quickly picked up the technique over the following days. Like all the activities on this week-long trip, it was best done in quick bursts before tiredness or cold set in.
Nothing could match the pace of our next icy pursuit. No sooner had we stepped from our minibus into a forest clearing ‘somewhere near Russia’ than we were assailed by the canine cacophony of dozens of huskies. They whipped themselves into a frenzy of wild-eyed excitement that was truly unleashed when they were allowed to run. If the closest you’ve come to dog sledging is grappling with a trolley down the frozen foods section of your local supermarket, fear not: you’ll pick it up quickly with tuition – and the sledges even have brakes.
Young children can ride in the sledge, but they should wrap up, and wear goggles to protect their eyes from the ice kicked up by the huskies. A few huskies look like they’re from the local wolf pack, so if your children are scared of dogs, take them to see Santa instead. He’s a lot less frisky.
After the exhilaration of husky sledging, more high-speed thrills followed, with a snowmobiling safari and adrenalin-charged tobogganing in the mountains of Koli National Park. The lake never did freeze enough for ice fishing. But it hardly mattered. The children would probably have been far too busy making snow angels or pelting each other with snowballs.
William Gray travelled with The Adventure Company (
