A greenlander and her dogs 3

This is Mia writing. My first try in a blog ever. I hope you can understand my english. Ask away if you have any questions.

February 29. Me as a passenger on another's sled in -28 degrees celcius. The open water in the ice on the icefiord, is steaming and creating moist in the air. See next picture.

 The icefiord. Only few icebergs and a lot of ice. The steam goes up to about 100 meters high.

From the left: Louie, Pedro, Lillepigen, Milo and "little" Hannibal. Lillepigen wants to be close to big Pedro (instead) of Milo as she should. When you almost only see the back of the  dogs you can't see that they are all iced up in the face, as you can see on Louie.

March 9. Moments on a dogsledtrack. We go left when passing another sled, an unwritten rule. 

March 21. I had trained the dogs on the flat ground for a while, and felt ready to go up over one of two hills, Akinnaq north, dogsledtracks where it's necessary to have the dogs behind the sled several times because it's steep and narrow, for your own and for other's sake. I tell the dogs to sop and go behind the sled, and then I push the sled and glide with the sled downhill. Very important for fishermen with a lot of fish, or sleds with a lot of equipment for longer trips, or sleds with more people like tourist tours. Because of there's almost no ice on the sea anymore, the possibilities for dogsledding ave narrowed down a lot.
The dogs have a lot of evergy and the weather is beautiful. Akinnaq north right ahead.

Going up a steep hill, where the dogs have to be behind the sled on the way back. The leashes are very much tangled, the males are still fighting for the role as top dog, so some don't want to run beside another dog, and some trying to find their places, and all the males wants to run beside the female dog, and I try to make them not to move so much around. The dogs are eager to go faster than the sled in front of us, and I break the sled, because I don't know if they can stay in front of them. Sometimes they use all their strength to pass the others and can't keep the speed, or loose their nerves, or the dogs on the other sled go faster when we pass them. There is way more dogs on the sled in front of us, but we go pass them and keep a good distance. They are going way longer than us and might have been out the route the day before. I'm proud though.

The dogs are not fond of taking a break, they just want to run and run. But I get them to lay down, untangel the leashes and get myself a cup of coffee. They should be tired, longer trip, steep hills, good speed, but they still wants to go on. Lillepigen in the back still wants to be close to the big male, Pedro with the black harness. They are looking at other dogsleds passing

Milo, the top dog have always been lying down away from the others. 

                                            The sled we passed and a tourist sled passing.

Big white world. A third sled, the last one is also a tourist sled. Good to go more than one sled if something unexpected should happen.

February 29. Me as a passenger on another's sled in -28 degrees celcius. The open water in the ice on the icefiord, is steaming and creating moist in the air. See next picture.

Ice fog. Beautiful nature.

Beautiful sparkling ice fog. Dogtrack and snowmobile tracks.

We also pass a sled on the way back. A young fisherman.

Going into another ice fog before going down the big hill.

Down on the flat ground. The dogs still have energy. And I'm so happy it went well and because we made it!

March 23. Another day taking the other hill, Akinnaq south. Here we already have past the first most dangerous hill and down on a lake, and going up again right ahead. 

The dogs like to pull and I use to say that they are very good dogs and they get proud and wants to dog even better. The are very strong.

In the distance you can se open water in the icefiord in front of Ilulissat's big glacier. Before the global warming there was never open water at this time a year and usually filled with icebergs.

A hut just before we stop for a break. You can see some sea ice and then some open water in front of the glacier.

Had some trouble again to make the dogs take a break, but succeeded. Nice weather. And me happy saying ' I did it!'. I have alway been afraid of this route, but I have won over the fear and it's a great and exciting route.

Going back. A lot of water have frozen on both sides of where we are going up.

March 26. Another day. The dogs needed to go for a long tour, so I went over Akinnaq north and further in to a place where you can se the dead glacier, a glacier which has stopped producing ice, in a side fiord to the icefiord. But it was very foggy. I bit scary not to see much where you were going, also exciting. For some days it have been warmer and the day before and the day before that the temperature have been above 0 celcius and have meltet snow. Rocks have appeared and the track was now frozen and quite slippery, made it more dangerous, and also made the the sled go much faster. Made it in record time. No view though

March 27. The first sledtour for the 7th dog, Aaju, in a shorter (skavle) to the right. I brought my dog-team-partner for safety. I share the dogs and ekvipment with him. It's expensive to have dogs and takes a lot of time, so it's nice to be 2 to take care of them. He haven't had time to go dogsledding because he recently became a dad, so it was his first trip this season too. None of the other dogs like Aaju and he don't like any of the other dogs. He ran happily in the start of the tour, then the others jumped him, we stopped it, then he ran most of the tour beside the sled, at the end we succeeded to get him up in front of the sled again, so good so far.