My second week of working at Upitrek and with my silky smooth skiing skills, myself and another guide took a group of nine Dutch customers on a seven day cross country skiing tour of about 120km's along the Russian border zone. The border zone is a no-mans land some distance from the actual border patrolled by the border guards. Don't go there unless you want a nice fine and investigation.
The unusually warm winter was in full swing, I was glad we weren't going to have too many lake crossings on this trip with the ice starting to melt.
Our accommodation for the first night was an famous bear hunters cabin. No running water or electricity so back to basics. The snowmobile was packed up and ready to go in the morning. It went out in front to make our ski tracks and the driver Markku prepared our lunch at the camp fires.
Great accommodation and food at Arola. It didn't really feel like work this week. Skiing all day with the customers telling them a little something about the nature and arriving at a place like this where there was tea and fresh home made blueberry pie waiting for us and after taking a sauna all kinds of reindeer, moose meat and freshly caught fish being cooked for us. Not too bad.
We came across a lot of animal tracks on our way, but unfortunately didn't see any animals.The Lynx tracks above were everywhere. It was good practise identifying the tracks for the customers with another exam on mammals coming up this week.
A lunch spot at one of the wilderness huts that are all over the country and free for anyone to use and stay overnight.
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| Wolf tracks |
After our final dinner and two nights at Martinselkonen wilderness centre I had completed my work experience at Upitrek and the course requirements of 240 hours. The work experience was really good, I enjoyed it and learnt a lot, but next time I'm gonna want to be getting paid!
Laters.
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