Key takeaways
- Everything else comes with the tour: transport, lunch, a snowsuit and boots. What you bring yourself is a hat and a pair of gloves, nothing more.
- The suit goes on over your own clothes, so a warm base layer that isn't cotton, worn under normal trousers, does most of the real work.
- The suit stops at your wrists and your collar. A hat, gloves and something over the lower face cover what it leaves out.
- Boots are provided, but dry socks underneath them, a thin pair under a thicker one, decide whether your feet stay warm for four hours.
Most of the day is handled for you
Transport to and from Tromso is included, about twenty-five minutes each way out to Kvaloya and back. Lunch is included too, a bowl of warm reindeer stew eaten in a turf hut, with something hot to drink and cake afterwards. A snowsuit and a pair of boots are handed to you before the dogs are, along with instruction on how to drive the sled. None of that needs to go in a bag.
What is left to pack is two items: a hat and a pair of gloves. That really is the whole list, and it looks too short the first time you read it, right up until you remember everything else above is already sorted. The suit covers your body, not your head or your hands. A hat and gloves fill exactly that gap.
What goes on before the suit
The suit goes over your own clothes, so what is underneath does most of the actual work of keeping you warm. A base layer that isn't cotton holds up best: cotton stays damp against skin once you have been standing outside for a while, and damp is colder than dry no matter how many layers sit on top of it. Wool or a synthetic thermal, over normal trousers, under the suit, is the simple version of it.
Bring more warmth for your top half than feels necessary, because the suit itself is bulky enough that you will not be doing anything energetic in it. Standing and holding a bar for around forty-five minutes burns very little energy, unlike walking or skiing, so the usual trick of warming up once you start moving does not really apply here.
A husky team stands harnessed in the snow outside Tromso, waiting for the sled to move.
Hands, face and glasses
Driving the sled means gripping a handlebar with your hands out in front of you, mostly still, for the whole run. The suit's sleeves stop at the wrist, so the gloves you bring are what stands between your fingers and the wind the sled's own speed creates. A thin liner glove under a warmer mitten is more useful than one thick pair on its own, because a liner lets you keep some grip and dexterity without taking everything off.
A hat covers the top of your head, not the strip of skin between where the hat ends and your collar begins, and that strip is exactly where the wind finds you facing forward into it. A scarf, a buff or a neck gaiter pulled up over the lower face closes that gap.
Glasses fog when warm breath meets cold air, and a buff pulled high over the nose can make that worse by aiming your breath straight up at the lenses. A looser scarf you can adjust gives more control over where your breath goes than a snug one does.
Feet, socks and the boots you're given
Boots are provided, which is one less decision to make. What is not decided for you is what goes on your feet before the boots do. A thin liner sock under a thicker wool sock keeps a boot's own insulation doing its job; a single pair of thick cotton socks works against it, because cotton holds sweat and damp feet cool down fast inside a closed boot.
Feet on a sled are mostly still for the whole ride, which is a different kind of cold from walking. Nobody standing in one place for forty-five minutes outdoors should expect their feet to feel as warm at the end as they did at the start, and dry socks going in are the one part of that actually within your control.
2 items
The full list of things to bring beyond what you're already wearing: a hat, and a pair of gloves. Everything else is issued at the door.
Tromso's own temperature, for scale
Tromso's recorded average sits well below freezing across the winter months: town lows run around minus four to minus five degrees in December and January, with daytime highs sitting at or just below freezing even in the mildest hours. That figure is the town, measured at a weather station, not the trail out on Kvaloya, and it says nothing on its own about how cold a sled feels compared with a street.
Standing still is colder than moving, and driving a sled is mostly standing still. Your hands sit out in front of you holding a bar in whatever wind the sled's own speed creates, while the rest of you stays largely in one place for the whole run. Nothing about the suit or the boots changes that. Only what you put on your hands and around your face does.
Cameras, phones and cold batteries
Cold weather drains a phone or camera battery far faster than room temperature does, and a battery reading half full at the meeting point can be dead before the dogs are harnessed. Keeping it in an inner pocket, against your body, rather than in an outer pocket of the suit, is the simple fix, and it only needs to come out to actually be used.
Thick gloves and a touchscreen do not get on, so if photos matter to you, a thin liner glove that still registers on a screen is worth having under whatever else covers your hands. Taking a glove off entirely for a few seconds in that cold to get one photo is a trade most people only make once.
What you do not need to buy
None of this calls for specialist outdoor kit. A warm hat and a pair of gloves you already own, or can pick up anywhere that sells winter clothing, meet the operator's own list in full. The suit and boots supplied do the heavy lifting, and layering underneath with clothes you already have covers the rest.
If you are still deciding what to pack, put the effort into your hands and your face last, since those are the two areas the suit and boots were never going to reach in the first place, and everything else on this page is really just detail underneath them.
