Husky Sledding and Northern Lights Experiences in Alta

If you want to drive a dog sled yourself, book the 4hr Dog Sledding Trip in Gargia Valley. It is a daytime trip with Æventyr: about 50 minutes on the trail behind your own team, then a warm lunch at the old Gargia mountain lodge. It holds 4.8 from 83 reviews, and the next open date when we checked in early November 2026 was 21 November, at $386 per person. It does not include the Northern Lights, so plan an evening tour for the sky. Our review →

A sled ride and a kennel visit are different trips

The other husky listing near Alta, the Arctic Wilderness Evening: Husky, Dinner & Aurora Borealis, does not include any dog sledding. The operator says so on the listing. You go out to the same Gargia lodge in the evening, meet the more than 40 huskies in the kennel, hear how teams are built and how mushers read their dogs, then eat Arctic stew by the open fire in a gamme, a Sámi-style turf hut. After dinner you go back outside and watch the sky, far from town lights.

It is a good evening if you love dogs and want a relaxed dinner with a chance of the aurora. It is not the trip to book if the sled is what you came for. It was $235 per person on 4 November, it has only 3 reviews (4.7), and one of them called it overpriced and light on Northern Lights content. Our review →

What happens on the sledding trip

A minibus collects you in Alta for the 30-minute drive to Gargia, where you are lent thermal suits, boots and gloves. The guides train you first, and one reviewer admits feeling a bit nervous at first, until getting the hang of braking. Each sled has its own team. If you book as two, you share a sled and swap driving halfway along the route, through pine forest and out across the frozen valley. You are outdoors for about an hour in total. Afterward there is a warm lunch, coffee and toddy in the lodge, and time with the dogs: the listing includes helping to unharness them, and reviewers single out meeting and feeding the huskies afterward.

Groups are small, up to 8, and the trip needs at least 2 participants to run; if it does not, the operator cancels and refunds you in full. One reviewer who had sledded before found the pace a little slow, so if this is not your first time behind a team, expect an easy trip.

Ages and limits

The minimum age is 8, and you need to be 16 to drive a sled alone, so younger children ride with an adult. The trip is not suitable for people over 130 kg, for pregnant travelers, or for anyone with back problems, mobility impairments or a low level of fitness. The evening kennel visit has a lighter limit: it is not suitable for children under 8, and there is no sled to drive.

“Daytime” in polar night

From late November to mid-January the sun does not rise in Alta. A December dog sledding trip runs in blue twilight: on 1 December there is usable light from roughly 08:40 to 14:00. That is enough to see the forest and the valley, in soft, low light, but it is too bright to expect the aurora, which UiT’s space-weather observatory says is usually best seen between 20:00 and 02:00. Alta averages around -7 °C in January and February, and sitting on a moving sled feels colder than standing still, so wear warm layers under the suit.

Huskies and the Northern Lights on the same day

There is no listing on GetYourGuide for dog sledding at night near Alta. The simplest plan is to sled by day and join an aurora tour the same evening or the next. The Small-Group Guided Northern Lights Tour ($258 on 4 November, up to 13 people, thermal suits to borrow) is our featured chase, and it moves to wherever the sky looks clearest. That matters, because the kennel evening and the sleigh and snowmobile nights follow a fixed route or stay in one place: if cloud sits over Gargia, you see cloud. Our review →

If you specifically want sledding under the Northern Lights, Holmen Husky Lodge near Alta runs evening tours under the aurora, booked directly with the lodge, not on GetYourGuide. And if you are in Alta in early March, the Finnmarksløpet, which Visit Alta calls Europe’s longest dog sled race, starts in the town center: the FL-300 class is due to leave on the evening of Friday 5 March 2027, though the race program was still being updated when we checked.

For other evenings out of town, see our pages on sleigh rides and snowmobile tours, or the guide to which Alta tour to book. Gargia is a 30-minute drive, and both husky trips include transport, so you can stay in town; our where to stay page covers the options. If I had one day and one evening, I would sled in the morning twilight and save the evening for a chase.