On February 9th, I went downtown to see the start of the annual Yukon Quest dogsled race. It’s a trek through a thousand miles of wilderness in the dead of the Arctic winter, from Fairbanks, Alaska to Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory, Canada.

It was a very cold morning in downtown Fairbanks, in the -30s.

Still, a large crowd gathered to watch the race, which starts out below a bridge on the frozen Chena River.

Enter the mushers:

Here’s #11, Lance Mackey of Fairbanks. He went on to win the race, and then to win the Iditarod just a few short weeks later. In 2007 he became the first musher ever to win both 1,000+ mile endurance races in the same year. He repeated that feat in 2008. If there were a dogsled racing hall of fame, Lance Mackey would have a whole wing of the building.

And some other mushers: