Charles Le Maistre (23), a trainee conveyancer with Crill Canavan, decided that he wanted to do something different to raise cash for a good cause, so he headed to Sweden with his cousin for the snow trek.
The trip was a great success and they managed to raise £4,000 for sufferers of the degenerative motor neurone disease which leads to wasting muscles, loss of mobility in the limbs and difficulties with speech, swallowing and breathing.
Charles had put his name on a list with his cousin Peter Le Maistre to do the dog-sled course in north Sweden a year and a half before they were called up to take part. Along with 17 other participants on the trip to the Arctic Circle, he drove his team of four huskies over 200 miles of snow, including over frozen lakes and through boreal forests.
Each person had four dogs pulling their sleds and a doctor travelled behind them on a snowmobile.
Charles described the trip, which started at Kiruna and ended there five days later, as incredible, saying that he slept on reindeer skins one night in temperatures that reached minus 37°C. The duo even managed to build an igloo on the trip. Daytime temperatures were still below freezing, with the warmest temperature recorded as minus 8°C.
He said that some days the scenery was like a ‘perfect winter scene’ complete with fluffy snow and Christmas trees.
The whole team raised more than £100,000 for the Motor Neurone Disease Association and Charles said that he learned a lot about the disease through doing the trek. ‘We didn’t know anything about the condition, but just wanted to raise money for a charity,’ he said.
He added that the downsides of the trip were the fact that they were not able to clean themselves very much, adding: ‘Obviously there was no hot water either. I spent one night in a snow hole with outside temperatures of minus 37°C! We collected water by breaking the ice that formed on top of fast-flowing streams and lived off reindeer meat, soup and bread.
‘I’ll never forget the sound of 80 dogs harnessed, desperate to run and winding each other up – and the trip ended with a skidoo safari and a visit to a stunning ice hotel.’
Charles Le Maistre ready to go with the pack
