Snowmobile tour at -30 degrees

When we wake up today, the sun is already shining beautifully. And we have something special planned: We’re going snowmobiling and have signed up for a guided tour. It takes place very close to our previous accommodation, the Magical Ponds. When we arrive we’re first kitted out with the right clothing. We climb into thick full-body winter overalls, balaclavas and helmets. Then we get a short briefing on how to ride a snowmobile. The key thing, we’re told, is to pull the handlebars towards you when steering rather than pushing them away. There’s a throttle lever on the right handlebar, and if you pushed the bars away instead of pulling them, with the thick gloves you could easily squeeze the throttle by accident and the snowmobile would shoot off out of control. Afterwards we get to pick a snowmobile. We go for a Lynx Adventure LX with a 600 cc engine. From the outside it looks like an oversized motorbike with two skis instead of a front wheel. Nicolas drives and Annina rides pillion. Riding it feels very unusual, completely different from driving a car on snowy roads and also completely different from riding a motorbike. It takes noticeably more strength to steer the thing through the snow. The handling is very spongy: It responds only sluggishly to steering, but all the more quickly to the throttle. We ride in a convoy together with the other participants and the two guides. Over the next hour and a half we cover a total of 30 kilometres through beautifully snowy forests and across frozen lakes. The sun beams down and makes the snow glitter like diamonds. Mostly we follow marked snowmobile trails, but sometimes we head slightly off them. Today it’s between -25 and -30 degrees, and towards the end of the ride the helmet visor is completely iced over. To see anything at all we have to flip it up, which promptly results in frozen eyelashes and faces. It’s a proper adventure, which we round off with the other participants and the guides in a snow tipi igloo by a fire, with warm food and drinks.

After this outing into the arctic cold we drive back to our Airbnb to warm up in the sauna and pack, as tomorrow is already our departure day.