This is the leg!

FL-1000 Per Weddegjerde describes the leg between Levajok 1 and Tana

Levajok is the third checkpoint in the race and splits FL-500 and FL-1000. From now on each race follow separate tracks: FL-500 turn against Jergul and FL-1000 proceed against Tana. Per Weddegjerde from Sula can look back on four accomplished FL-1000 races, and he knows quite a lot about the leg between Levajok 1 and Tana.

-This is one of the really tough legs, Weddegjerde says. The leg offers a lot of rough weather and heavy wind, and by experience I know that it can be a lot of bare ice on the way towards Tana. He must be considered as an expert in hilly terrain, and he thinks it can be difficult to take loose from the checkpoint in Levajok.- From time the track can be winding through dense birch, and sometimes the track passes windswept, bare mountain.  Because of that he meets varied challenges – just like a kind of “all-round track”.

Despite that the checkpoint on Levajok involves resting for both mushers and dogs, it is heavy to leave because the following leg is technical challenging because you have to stay focused, he explains and describe situations when he has raced slalom between rocks over the mountain plateau. – You know when you fight with yourself to stay awake because when it is dark and the track is tough,  there is small margins. He once drove in a scree, but luckily it went OK.

On the leg towards Tana, the mushers get challenged by several steep slopes, but when the dog team arrive the checkpoint in Tana, 300 kilometers of the race is left behind and the competition comes to a head.

Foto: Jørn Losvar