Book it if you want a long drive with your own team and your dates are fixed. The half-day safari is about twice the distance of the usual Ylläs rides, in a small group, with warm clothing included, and it is open to teenagers from fifteen. It is not for families with younger children, for anyone over sixty-five, or for anyone who might cancel: inside a month the whole price is gone. Add the transfer if you have no car.
Most of the husky rides sold at Ylläs cover five to ten kilometres. Husky Ranch
Lapland, south of the fells near Kurtakko, sells something longer: a half-day
safari of about twenty kilometres in which you drive your own team of Alaskan
huskies.12
Three things about it decide who should book it, and only one of them is the
distance.
Twice the trail
The programme lasts three and a half hours, an hour and a half of it on the
sled, over twenty to twenty-three kilometres. Groups are two to eight people.
Thermal clothing is included, and the safari ends with sausages grilled on the
fire in a lean-to, hot berry juice and
sweets.1 The trail runs south
through forest and past Teuravuoma, which the resort’s listing calls
Europe’s largest
wetland.2
The price starts at €290 a person, and you can drive alone or share a sled with
a friend and take turns.1 Against
the rides compared in
husky safaris in Ylläs, that is more money for
much more time behind the dogs.
Tripadvisor ratings, 18 Rovaniemi operators
Highest first
Snowtrail Safaris 5.0
Nordic Odyssey 5.0
Nordic Adventures 4.9
Arctic GM 4.9
Book Lapland 4.9
Bearhill Husky 4.9
Arctic Attitude 4.9
StayLapland 4.8
Wild About Lapland 4.7
Wild Nordic 4.7
Lapland Winter Park 4.6
Safartica 4.5
Nordic Unique Travels 4.5
Apukka Resort 4.4
Lapland Welcome 4.3
Arctic Circle Snowmobile Park 4.3
Arctic Circle Husky Park 4.2
Raitola 3.4
<44.04.55.0
Ratings read from Tripadvisor. The shaded compartment left of the divider holds any score below 4.0. We record the score only; review counts and review text are not part of our comparison.
Fifteen to sixty-five
The kennel’s requirements give an age window of fifteen to sixty-five. That
lets a fifteen-year-old drive a team, and it rules out both younger children
and older
adults.1 A family with children under
fifteen should look at the shorter rides instead.
Terms that reward certainty
The cancellation terms are strict: a fee of 20 per cent if you cancel within
ninety days of the safari, and the whole price if you cancel within thirty. The
season runs from December to
April.1
That is the real filter. If your dates are fixed, the terms cost you nothing.
If a flight could move or a child could fall ill, a shorter ride with lighter
terms is the safer purchase, and
what a husky safari price includes
lists the questions that make two offers comparable.
The kennel's page offers both a single sled and a shared one, where two friends take turns driving, but it publishes only one starting price, from €290 a person, and does not say how much the shared option saves, if anything. Ask before booking. For a couple, the answer decides whether the safari is one long drive each or two halves of one, which is the main thing the extra distance is buying.
Why the upper age limit?
The kennel lists fifteen to sixty-five as a requirement but does not say why. Driving a team for an hour and a half over twenty kilometres asks for balance and some strength on hills and turns, and that is the likely reason. If someone in your party is over sixty-five and fit, ask the kennel directly rather than assuming either way, and ask whether they could ride in a shared sled instead of driving.
Can we get there without a car?
Yes, for an extra charge: the kennel sells pick-up and drop-off from Äkäslompolo and Ylläsjärvi, the two villages at Ylläs, but its page does not print the price. Ask for it when you book and add it to the safari price before comparing with the resort rides, some of which include the transfer. With a car, the trip down past Kurtakko is part of the morning.
Lapland Handbook is written by its editorial staff in Rovaniemi. Every price, age limit and group size in a comparison is read from the operator's own page and marked "Not stated" when the operator does not publish it. Each guide names who should not book, and names the operator that suits each kind of group, whichever it is.
We would like to count visits, so we can see which guides get read. That needs a cookie. Nothing else on this site does, we show no advertising, and refusing changes nothing about what you can read or book. What we measure and why.
