Lake Baikal

We hit a bump and take off, landing moments later on the ice. I am holding on for as tight as my gloves will allow but know I'm a small slip away from going crashing onto the ice. I am dog sledding across Baikal and I have to say the it is certainly a thrilling way to explore the frozen wasteland. Training had been brief. From the description I had pictured a safety briefing, followed by demonstration from the instructor, a dry for me on a stationary sled and then a slow start before building up to a full blooded sprint. What I got was 10 seconds, plus an extra 5 for questions. It went as follows: "When I say left command, lean left (Andrei leans) We say right command, lean right (He leans again), when I say stop command you use brake." My questions were: "That's really the brake? I have to unhook it to stop?" Andrei's answer was "Yes, stand, we go". I stood, the sled was unhooked from its anchor and BANG! we were off. I was so surprised I very nearly stayed behind, the dogs had been raring to go and we were absolutely flying. I concentrated on staying on, ever so slightly nervous that I didn't know what the left, right and more importantly the stop commands were. After a few kilometres I started to settle a little but I noticed that we were having some issues with the lead dog, the one that Andrei had said was the clever one. Unfortunately Yazik was determined to prove him wrong and refused to go right, only left, taking us through some patches of ice that Andrei clearly did not want us to go on. I am usually very patient when training an animal. We have a dog at home called Fly who has exactly the same problem with sheep. She'll only go left meaning we often have to take them the whole way round a field, even if they were standing just to the right of the gate we want to lead them through. This is frustrating but if Fly were taking me across a fozen lake in April I'd really prefer her to be sticking with the route plan, in fact I'd prefer her not to be in charge. We stop a couple of times, a difficult and terrifying process. First I must unhook the brake, which is a piece of skidoo track with bolts screwed into it. I then have to leave the relative safety of the runners to stand on this. When we eventually stop my weight is all that is preventing the dogs taking off again, though in fact if they wanted they could easily go and leave me on my backside in the middle of the lake. Andrei explains to Yazik the gravity of the situation. We set off again. Strangely we occasionally pass Christmas trees that have been stuck in the ice. I thought they had perhaps been the sites of drunken festivities, though I later find out they are to designate thin sections of the ice. I'm glad i hadn't known this at the time, only the night before I had seen a lorry underneath the ice that had gone through the previous week. Police divers were working to recover it but I saw this morning that they hadn't suceeded. On the return leg we went a slightly more subdued pace and thankfully Yazick stayed the right side of the Christmas trees. The sun was beating down and Admiral and Adamant, the two strong male dogs at the back of the team kept dipping their heads to scoop up ice to drink. I felt secure enough to take some photos and then the edge of the lake loomed and I stamped on the brake for the final time.