It was so cold in town that half the men had frozen snot in their beards, and though the women weren’t snotty – or bearded, for that matter – they were chillingly intimate: “I feel so nervous I’m almost sick,” admitted Catherine Pinard, 32, one of seven women waiting to begin the toughest dogsled race in the world: the Yukon Quest.

Of the 28 muffled competitors lined up by Main Street ready to head out for the wilderness, Catherine was my favourite because she wasn’t just snot-free, she was pretty. I stood on the start-line in temperatures of -20C (-4F) cheering her as the countdown began. Catherine’s 14 dogs tugged yelpingly at her sled and the 500-strong crowd – huge by local standards – writhed with good-natured small-town excitement. “Three... two... one... off!”

Catherine sped away in a flurry of silent snow, heading for the interior of a province so vast and so sparsely populated that the figures are simply astounding. Yukon is Canada’s westernmost territory, a wild land more than twice Britain’s size, yet with a population of just 32,000. Space – the final frontier.

This is the landscape of Jack London’s Call of the Wild, a place I had flown 12 hours to find – ten to Vancouver, two more north. And here at last was Whitehorse, Yukon’s low-rise capital hugging the banks of the legendary Yukon river, a town holding about three-quarters of the territory’s entire population, its grid of streets layered with icing-sugar snow.

Dead in front of me, race sleds were heading out at three-minute intervals, taking on the annual Quest’s incredible 1,000-mile (1,600km) challenge, a wild dash north then west across icy emptiness between Whitehorse and Fairbanks, Alaska: one year it goes one way; the next year, the other.

It’s a race of maybe 12 days, competitors hauling 250lbs (113kg) of supplies, sleeping on the trails, dog and man keeping each other alive just as they did in the days of the Gold Rush. History lives right here and, though the first prize is a meaty $40,000 (more than £20,000), that’s not the point at all.

Earlier, I’d spoken to Frank Turner, a veteran Quester, who explained the almost mythical importance of this event to Yukon’s soul. The Quest, it seems, is a celebration of the useful dog, a demonstration of its place in wilderness history. Without dogs, there would have been no Gold Rush, no mail in winter, no pioneer supplies. No Whitehorse. That’s what this race is about, in a landscape that is as it always was – as stark, as beautiful, as wild, as dangerous.

“Maybe you get four hours sleep in 24,” Frank growled. “It’s tough on yourself, your ability to manage your emotions. You fall asleep on the sled. At night, the coldest times, we keep on moving. The lack of sleep hurts you. At 40 below the dogs’ breath freezes. In 24 hours you run 100 miles.”

Sitting in Frank’s warm wooden house, listening to him articulate the reality of wilderness was reason enough to be in Yukon. Seeing the fragile sleds slide out towards the endless black forests and the low, white mountains worked the rest of the trick.

And then came personal experience. The whole point of Yukon is that they still mine gold and they still race dogs, so the territory lives with its own sense of history. But they also give tourists a go at the reins, so reality warps pleasantly at this point. I went out into the wild with my own sled and a guide who was 6ft 10in (2.08m) tall and weighed 240 pounds (17st 2lb, 109kg) – the kind of frontiersman Jack London wrote about.

Ian McDougall, 55, is to the Yukon what Daniel Boon was to Kentucky, except he’s doing it now. As well as taking tourists out from the Sky High Wilderness Ranch, just outside Whitehorse, he traps for a living. So 20 miles out on the trail we checked his lines and found a fox frozen in the deep snow, neck snapped clean by iron hoops. With one hand, Ian hauled the corpse to his sled and threw it in to trade in town later, its pelt a prize worth maybe $300.

That night we sat in a tent by a wood stove, with logs we’d chopped and water from a hole we had hammered in a frozen stream, and sometimes Ian spoke, and sometimes he didn’t, the gaps filled with the sound of silence outside. Then he’d talk about books he’d read, bears he’d killed, a pack of wolves he’d faced down one time, 150lbs of fresh moose-meat on his back...

Do you see? I was camping at -20C with my own dog-team and a trapper chewing the fat. Next day, hitch up and more of the same. One afternoon I fell off at speed, clinging on as the dogs dragged me along washed-out trails, daring me to right the thing and jump back up. I froze, got tired. But at night I warmed myself by the stove and stories and a sense of plain reality.

I flew an hour north to Dawson, Yukon’s second “city”, with a population of just over 1,800. It’s a place of dirt roads and boardwalks, the spot where they discovered Klondike Gold in 1897, and where 35 families still dig it out and make a good living, though it’s mechanised now. There are also decent hotels, a casino called Diamond Tooth Gerties, and Jack London’s cabin to look round.

Dawson is mid-point for the Quest, whichever direction they run, so if you take a room here for a few days you can watch competitors stumble in for a mandatory 36-hour stopover while vets check the dogs – “the dawgs” – and mushers sleep like the dead. It’s exciting. One morning I got up at 4am to watch them slide eerily out of the white-dark, wide-eyed from sleeplessness. “I want a cold beer,” one mumbled to me as he crossed the line.

“I’ve got a dog in the sled,” said another. “He’s tired. Been there 70 miles.” And there indeed were the animal’s eyes, peering hopelessly from the folds of a tender blanket.

The Quest really is extraordinary. These mushers. They would run six hours, rest six but during that period they’d feed their dogs, change the dog-boots (yes, boots for dogs), cook, make everything right – maybe doze. Then they would get up and run another six hours and I could hardly imagine 1,000 miles of it.

But off they went after the Dawson stopover. One by one, out into Yukon’s goldlands, its emptiness.

Need to know

The Yukon Quest is held annually, its direction reversing each year. The 2008 race (the 25th) starts on February 9 in Fairbanks, Alaska, reaching Dawson on February 14, and finishing at Whitehorse about six days later.
Getting there: Nicholas Roe flew via Vancouver to Whitehorse with Air Canada, (0871 2201111, www.air canada.com), and on to Dawson with Air North (001 867 668 2228, www.flyairnorth.com). Return fare Heathrow to Whitehorse via Vancouver is £564.10pp. Windows on the Wild (020-8742 1556, www.windowsonthewild.com) offers tailor-made Yukon Quest dog-sledding trips for £1,700pp. Includes flights with Air Canada, transfers, one night in Whitehorse on arrival, three nights in Dawson, five days’ dog sledding driving your own sled, and three further nights in Whitehorse. Room-only (full board when dog sledding). Further information: www.yukonquest.com, www.travelyukon.com, www.canada.travel

Paws for a break

Inntravel (01653 617906, www.inntravel.co.uk) has a dog-sledding week based at Ylläs, Finland, from £1,265pp departing January 19.

Footloose (0870 4448735, www.footloose.com) offers the chance to try dog-sledding as part of its 13-day Alaskan Adventure, from £1,060pp excluding flights.

Drive your own sledge from Alta in Norwegian Lapland. Two-and-a-half-hour trips leave daily except Sunday, from £95pp. SAS (www.flysas.com) flies to Alta from various UK points via Oslo. More details at www.holmenhundesenter.no.

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