Responsible snowmobile safaris

You don’t need to be on a waiting list to try out an electric snowmobile. Skafur-Tours, our Finnish vacation specialists, decided to start offering electric snowmobiles for their 2019 winter season. Riitta Kiukas, the founder of Skafur-Tours, explains their appeal: “Electric snowmobiles are first of all more quiet and easier to handle (you cannot drive too fast) so they are safer. What’s more, they will make it possible to get more enjoyment out of the nature and cause fewer disturbances to the lives of local people and wildlife.”

You can now book a tailor made low-carbon Finland vacation that includes some of the first electric snowmobile safaris in the world out of Rovaniemi, Lapland. The fleet of eSleds takes just one hour to recharge after a 1.5-hour trip, and uses green energy.

"We'll test it as soon as there is snow in Rovaniemi," Riitta from Skafur-Tours told us in autumn 2019, as they waited for the snow cover. Winter 2019 will be the big commercial debut of eSleds in Rovaniemi. The electric snowmobile landscape is currently virgin snow, into which you could be making the first tracks.

In the last 10-15 years, most tourism companies have shifted to using four-stroke engines for their snowmobiles. Four-stroke engines are quieter, more fuel efficient, and less polluting. They release between two and 20 times less emissions than two-stroke engines, but is this enough?

They might be the Teslas of the tundra, but eSled adoption is slow. After all, a conventional snowmobile can last a good 15-20 years. Urpo Heikkinen, from our specialist nature travel company Upitrek, explains that nowadays smaller local vacation companies think twice before purchasing new vehicles. “Snowmobiles are expensive and, at the same time, winters are getting shorter and the time period in which snow covers the ground is shorter too. Investing in snowmobiles should be thought about carefully.”

Whilst electric snowmobiles will be fantastic when they’re ubiquitous, they’re not common…yet. “There are not very many e-cars in Finland, either,” says Minna from Äksyt Ämmät, our Finland vacation specialists. “It takes time to develop this technology here. The distances are long, and the winters are cold!” Reliability is key. You wouldn’t want to run out of juice on an eSled in Finland’s remote north eastern reaches, for example.

Source: 1) The Ecology of Transportation, J Davenport, J L Davenport, eds. 2006 p.348

Around 40 percent of all the trips we run to Finland involve snowmobiles – and they’re an almost ubiquitous part of a trip if you travel in winter. Our 15 best-selling Finnish vacations involve snowmobiling on at least one of the days as an optional activity.

Unlike, say, huskies, they don’t require year-round care to be used for a short winter season, so their running costs are actually a lot lower. A whole service industry has grown around them. Choose a snowmobile safari, and you’re giving money to the mechanics in the area. Companies who use snowmobiles also argue that the alternative isn’t dog sleds, but four-wheel drive vehicles, which can be even worse for noise and carbon emissions.

Our travelers are divided. Some love the thrill of snowmobiles. Others point out the negatives. “The only activity which I felt harmed the environment was the snowmobile safari. I am sure that this form of transport is vital for working people, but as a tourist jaunt it is polluting a place that is proud to be the cleanest in Europe,” says Irene Mitchell, who booked a winter cottage vacation in Finnish Lapland.

After her tailor made Northern Lights family vacation, Caroline Brooks said, “Snowmobiles seem inherently bad for the environment and, while essential for local people such as the reindeer herder to do their work, our two-hour snowmobile trip with other travelers seemed like a frivolous burning of fossil fuels, even though it was fun!”

Alternatively, opt for a company that is as motor-free as possible. Our specialist nature travel company Upitrek estimates that its skiing tours produce 4kg of carbon emissions per day, per person, including all transfers, making their full trip as low-carbon as taking one 32km car ride. “For us it is easy,” says Urpo Heikkinen from Upitrek. “We do not operate snowmobile tours and that´s it. When we started this company in 2000 we did not want to operate snowmobile safaris. Our thought process was that they are not so nice, they are noisy and bad smelling machines. Now, when we all know more, it turns out they are bad for climate too, as they use quite a lot of fuel.”

Sadly, no trip is ever motor-free, as Urpo explains: “We do need a little bit of snowmobiling in our work, ski tracks need to be groomed and in some cases luggage transported by snowmobile.” Minna, from our specialist vacation company Äksyt Ämmät, uses snowmobiles but rarely. “We do have to make our skiing tracks by using a snowmobile but we only open the track when we have a group skiing there. The locals also use our tracks, so we’re helping local people to keep up their health!”

Swishing through the taiga on a husky sled, sliding across frozen tundra on cross country skis – these have long been the dreamiest ways to experience Finnish Lapland. But even this permafrost landscape is changing. Maybe soon, purring through the trees on a silent electric snowmobile will be as common as enjoying the howl of huskies on your next winter adventure in Finland.