I am not sure I have ever enjoyed eating more than in the past five days. Skiing six to eight hours a day burns a lot of energy and makes pretty much anything taste amazing. But in our case I think the food legitimately is delicious. If you have never had a breakfast of whole oat groats slow cooked in cream and topped with whole yogurt and berries, I can’t recommend it highly enough. And if you can accompany it with rich egg pancake squares and coffee, even better.

We begin our ski today a few block walk  from our hotel. Since most of our days are spent skiing through snowy forests and over frozen lakes and rivers. it’s fun to walk through a small Lapland town, seemingly unremarkable, but with many interesting features just under the surface. Outside a number of houses, we see reindeer meat air drying under the eaves, and an older man scoots by on a sled walker, perfect for a place where ice covers the sidewalks over half the year.

Our ski begins from a small municipal park and takes us along a narrow trail between a military base and a lumber mill. We see snow mobile military vehicles the size of busses practicing maneuvers in the pine forest and get a kind wave when we ski by. Sharing a border with an untrustworthy and often hostile neighbor like Russia makes Finland a wary and vigilant country where military service is mandatory and fighter jets are periodically heard racing across the sky.

After two 70 km days, today’s 60 km feels light and we make good time under mostly blue sky. We have a good group, with our Finish friend Jussi setting the pace, a guy named Andy from the Swiss Alps with excellent technique and a dry sense of humor, Tomas from Munich who professes to be exhausted but then charges up hills, and the indefatigable Diana from SW Ontario (and now Colorado).

In the late morning we tackle the longest climb of the trip so far (modest to be sure, this is Finland after all…just wait until Norway) and most of our group double polls the whole thing. For the uninitiated, this simply means propelling yourself up the hill using just your poles and requires a lot of upper body and core strength. Perhaps this is wishful thinking, but it feels like we are getting stronger as the trip progresses.

Our guide Harry does it again, meeting us with hot reindeer soup and bread in the middle of the forest. It feels like a minor miracle.

And then the rain starts. It’s inevitable. If you spend all day outside in the Arctic, you get all kinds of weather. We get a bit wet and cold but make it to the day’s finish line before it gets too uncomfortable. A sauna and a hamburger revive us and we sleep well.

The next day (day 6 of skiing) begins, as usual, with a hearty breakfast and brushing the wax off of our skis. The highlight of breakfast is berry compote on a croissant (the dessert course).

The skiing is hard. It’s a little over 65 km but with two big climbs in the morning and a difficult slushy track in the afternoon. The descent after the second climb is very steep, icy and uneven from snowmobile traffic. It’s treacherous. Our small group makes its way down cautiously but still experience moments of feeling out of control. We are relieved to get to the bottom unscathed. At the top of the second climb, there is a gorgeous back country warming hut and take a quick water break.

It’s the hardest day so far, much of it spent double polling with tunnel vision locked on the skis of the person directly ahead, working hard to keep the pace. The second half of the day is mostly through flat Arctic forest with tiny trees and wind swept frozen lakes.

By the end of the day, we are wind blown and deeply fatigued. A stop at a little trail side cafe helps, but we are all feeling cooked. Jussi and Tomas try to smile but it’s too much effort.

A bit later we find out that one of the skiers behind us crashed on the steep icy descent and was evacuated on a snowmobile and taken to the hospital, where he remains overnight. It sounds like he broke his hip or pelvis, but we don’t know for sure. The news makes for a somewhat subdued mood at dinner as we feel sorry for him and know it could have been any of us.