It’s -15°C at the top
of the mountain pass. Minus 20 if you factor in the wind chill. The huskies aren’t bothered in the slightest, though. They’re spending the night here on the Col du Mont Cenis, sleeping outside in nests of straw as the wind picks up and the temperatures drop even further. It’s late January in the French Alps, and this is the high-altitude night-stop, halfway through one of Europe’s biggest sled-dog races, La Grande Odyssée. If the mushers and their dogs have suffered from the cold already, it’s about to get a lot worse.
Hans Lindahl, from Norway, is leading the race, currently just under 13 minutes ahead of his rival, the Spaniard Iker Ozkoidi. With a bitter wind blowing over the pass from Italy, and the loose snow swirling around him, he struggles to peg down the tunnel-shaped tent that will house him and his eight dogs overnight. Every few minutes a brown nose pokes curiously through a loose flap.
Eventually Lindahl settles his canine athletes down for the night. But he is in severe pain, having sliced open his leg with the sharp snow hook he uses to anchor his sled. Later that night, a doctor will patch him up with eight stitches, allowing
