Inuvik (Feb 06/06) - Living in the North doesn't come at any great sacrifice for engineer Olav Falsnes.

"People in the city line up in their cars to go to a nice place like a lake," Falsnes said. "Here we can go out our front door."

Falsnes moved to Canada from Norway, and has lived in the Canadian North for 23 years.

Trained as an aircraft engineer, Falsnes worked on experimental aircraft in Edmonton before making the journey to Inuvik.

"There are big open spaces around you here," Falsnes said. "From time to time my wife and I think about moving south, but when we make a trip south, we can't wait to get back to Inuvik."

Falsnes manages the Arctic Chalet in Inuvik, but of late has been spending a lot of his time building one of the last great traditional tools of the North - the dog sled.

Walking into Falsnes' shop, one is greeted with the clutter of tools and a fine wood dust that covers almost everything.

At the centre of the shop is a giant five-metre dog sled turned upside down. The engineer is busy drilling in screws to hold the runners for the sled in place.

Falsnes describes what he is building as a state-of-the-art dog sled for expeditions across the North.

"I've built a number of expeditions sleds," Falsnes said.

"Right now I'm building a sled for two Europeans who are travelling from Inuvik to Labrador."

He has made several unique adjustments to the traditional transport sled of the Inuvialuit, known by many as a qamutik.

"This is a sled the Inuvialuit people have built for years to travel over the ice," Falsnes said. "They used to be made of whale bone, but now are mostly made from wood lashed together with rope."

Falsnes uses thin pieces of wood with strips of fibreglass in-between, which when pressed together and laminated form the skeleton of the sled.

He uses a piece of plastic between the runners and the body of the sled to increase the qamutik's flexibility.

He also brings in a special type of plastic from the U.S. to tack onto the bottom of the runners.

"It's a silicon-based plastic that stays more flexible and slippery in either the extreme cold or in warmer temperatures," Falsnes said.

Once the sled is complete it will weigh 77 kg which is light by qamutik standards.

The sled can carry loads as large as 360 kg, said Falsnes.

With a love for ideas and engineering since he was only 14 years old, Falsnes takes great care when building a qamutik - something he learned during his years building planes where even the tiniest mistake could lead to disastrous consequences.

"The sled must be strong and reliable. You can imagine some guy out there on the ice and the sled breaks down.

So the sled must be made not to break down.

His latest sled took 110 hours to finish because there is a lot of detail work.

"It does take time, but it's like they say, 'Rome wasn't built in a day'."