The Great Journey

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[ Riding in a Dog Sled on a Snowfield ]

Our journey covering both the North and the South American continents ended in the western part of Alaska. Originally I was planning to cross this 700km of snowfield in tundra climate by pulling a sled myself. But I had to change to traditional dog sleds because there were many polar bears.
After practicing riding a dog sled for 1 week, we started on February 16 with 3 sleds. "Dogs are wonderful companions once you become good partners," I was told by an experienced musher. Yet it seemed it would take a while to be able to say that. When we let the dogs run as they liked, the sleds were overturned whenever it hit a curve or a slope. Without a trail in front of them, they stopped not knowing which way to go even on a level road. In those cases, we had to lead them on skis. On the road with many ups and downs, heavy sleds got stuck into the deep snow many times. It was arduous job to dig them out of the snow. Muscles we never knew we had began to hurt. Where the spring water was frozen, the sled flew up more than a meter in the air and I got hurled onto the hard ice. The pain was severe and I couldn't breathe. Other members were thrown out of their sleds over and over resulting in three of them breaking ribs. It was just the beginning of a confused journey on the snowfield.