I cannot decide which was scarier – driving a car at nearly 40mph (60km/h) on
a sheet of ice towards an imaginary reindeer, or travelling at a third of
the speed while standing on the narrow wooden runners of a dog sled, trying
to guide a pack of frisky huskies along a forest trail.
Even with very little to crash into, driving fast on ice seems frighteningly
unsafe. It is a skill you must acquire when you live as far north as
Saariselkä in Finnish Lapland, some 300km above the Arctic Circle. It is so
cold here that car engines have to be plugged into the electricity supply to
stop them seizing up. That is what makes Saariselkä’s Action Park driving
centre so useful.
Action Park is an ice and snow driving centre, used by holidaymakers and
driving professionals alike. It has two 1.5km snow handling tracks and a
shorter ice track for testing your rally skills, as well as parallel half
kilometre-long ice and snow tracks to pick up a bit of speed. There is also
a 140m-diameter ice and snow circle in which to practise doughnuts.
I chose an Audi A4, the same type of car that I drive at home. Janne Ylimys,
my instructor, told me to imagine that the cones ahead were a reindeer.
Ylimys put his foot down, accelerating up to just under 40mph (which seems a
lot faster when you are on ice), stamped rapidly on the brake at the very
last moment and guided the back of the car smoothly around the cones – or
pretend reindeer.
Then we swapped seats. I am sorry to report that the reindeer did not make it
on that first run. By the third run Ylimys felt confident enough to get out
of the car and, by the end of the session, I was felt that Lapland’s real
reindeer population was safe.
My dog sled experience came a day later. Naively, I had assumed that I would
be the one sitting in the sled, wrapped up in toasty furs. How wrong I was.
I stood on the wooden runners and looked for the controls to steer it. There
were none. Lauri Sassali, the driver, informed me that my eight-strong team
of huskies would follow the lead dog.
Sassali jumped on a snowmobile and sped off into the distance. “Mush” was
apparently not in the dogs’ vocabulary, although veto (pull), ho (left)
and chi (right) were. I blame my accent for the fact that they did nothing.
Eventually, a distant shout from Sassali got them moving.
Every now and then the dogs would veer off the track into the thick snow on
either side, causing the sled to lean over alarmingly. A hefty push, with
one foot on a runner and the other in the snow, eventually put them back on
track.
The scenery was spectacular. The sky was a dusky, pinkish purple, while trees
were caked in thick snow.
After an hour and a half of driving through this landscape and attempting to
keep the dogs out of the thick snow, I was exhausted. Wind burn had also
given me cheeks the colour of the rapidly setting sun and a frozen smile
that would take hours to thaw.
Saariselkä boasts plenty of other attractions, including being Santa’s home,
which means December is a particularly busy month to visit. Go after then
and the place is much more likely to be filled with Japanese couples seeking
the Northern Lights.
It is claimed that Saariselkä enjoys 200 nights of aurora borealis displays
every year. The ski season should be a good time to see the lights. In
January night lasts for about 20 hours, while sunrise, dusk and sunset take
up the other four. Sadly, I must have been there on seven of the remaining
165 days.
Saariselkä also offers skiing, although it has to be the only resort I have
ever visited where the top lift station is served by bus. The intense cold
makes sitting on a metal chairlift seat rather uncomfortable after a while:
some clued-up skiers had brought their own cushions. Going up takes eight
minutes but seems longer. Coming down on schuss takes a minute. Still, there
is a very pleasant restaurant, the Huippu, at the top, where you can warm up
with a bowl of salmon soup and a stew of sautéed reindeer with lingonberry
jam.
Need to know
Mark Frary travelled to Saariselkä with Inghams. Seven nights’ half board at
the four-star Holiday Club Hotel costs from £443 per person in January,
including charter flights from a choice of UK airports to Kittila,
three-and-a-half hours away from the holiday centre (www.inghams.co.uk).
A three-hour winter driving programme at Action Park costs £380 (www.actionpark.fi).
A three-hour husky trip with Top Safaris costs £80 per person (www.saariselka.fi/topsafaris).
