Runaway dogs and frozen breath: Hongkongers sled 250km through Arctic Circle
Whiteout conditions cause confusion as a driverless dogsled speeds off into the blizzard almost taking out other riders as it goes
The extreme cold sapped the energy out of Philip Murton as he dogsledded for five days through the Arctic Circle.
The temperatures would plummet to -30 degrees Celsius at night.
“It is combination of the fact that it is cold, but for five days you cannot escape that cold,” Murton said. “We were wearing multiple layers, hats, gloves, but we couldn’t get comfortable and we’d wake up five or six times a night. And your breath would freeze so if you hit the side of the tent ice would drop on you.”
Murton, sales director for Royale International, had signed up for a 250km event that took him from Tromso, Norway and finished up at Jukkasjarvi, Sweden with his colleague John Fawcett, who at one point suffered from frostbite.
But the pair had never driven dogs before, and before training in Finland they worried about the prospect of being left in charge of a pack of semi-wild animals.