Six days of hut-to-hut backcountry skiing in the Polar Night in Halti National Park, Arctic Finland, pulling sleds — and learning to cross-country ski more or less from scratch.
Halti sits about 300km north of the Arctic Circle, and in December and January the sun does not come up at all. It was pitch black for about twenty hours a day; for the other three or four the sky went from dark blue to nearly light, depending on how much cloud there was. Most of the skiing was done by head torch.
We stayed in huts each night, all of them off grid — no electricity, so the only light was our head torches, candles and the log fire. Every hut had a fire. Some were cosy and efficient and got really warm. One did not: on the coldest night, New Year’s Eve, it was -40°C outside, and after hours with the fire going the hut had still only reached -5°C inside.
Temperatures across the week ran from -15°C to -40°C, the sleds were around 25–30kg — against 80kg in Antarctica — and one day we skied to the cairn where Finland, Norway and Sweden meet. More than 27km on the longest day.
