My name is Morten Fonseca, born in 1975. I grew up in Thisted in Denmark, a small city for
12.000 inhabitants located in northwestern Denmark along the Limfjord. Through my first 20
years I spent most of my time in the YMCA-scouts organisation - out in the woods, on the
waters and in the mountains.The life with the scouts and lots of
skiing holidays together with my family awakened my interest for outdoor life. After
completing high school examination and finally the military service in 1996, I took off to
Alta in northernmost Norway, where I entered Øytun Folkehøgskole (folk high school). I
joined Harald Tunheim´s outdoor life and dog mushing class.
I planned to stay one year in Alta, while I would try to make up my mind about what I
would like to do. However, after the first year I applied to stay one more year at Øytun,
and I was offered a job as an assistant teacher in another class (wildlife photographing
and outdoor life)
.During the second year I had a lot of time off , which I mostly spent
together with mushing teacher Harald Tunheim and his sled dogs. Harald is among the best
long distance mushers in Norway and Europe.
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He is a three-time champion of Finnmarksløpet - the longest sled dog sled race in Europe
covering 1000 km (625 miles) of Norwegian wilderness.After his third victory, Tunheim
signed up for the 1999 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. That became contemporary a challange
to me. I returned to Alta again to join Tunheim and help out with dog training and
preparations for the Iditarod. Through Harald I got to know Alaska og later on musher Jeff
King, who would be my new mushing teacher and model.Together with
Helge Rasmussen (a friend from Øytun), I left for Alaska in the fall of 1999 to learn
more about dogs an mushing in Jeff King´s kennel in Denali. King is considered as the
most winningest musher in the world. He has 3 Iditarod victories, in addition to a number
of other sled dog reace championships.
Morten returned to Alaska again in October 2000, this time with his new golden goal: To
take his own dog team (King´s yearling team) out on the trail from Anchorage to Nome in
the 2001 Iditarod - starting on 4th Avenue downtown Ancorage on Saturday March 3!
Read more about "My mushing experience"
Read more about "My teachers, Harald and Jeff"
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