One of the many things a top-rank musher has to do during the gruelling two weeks of the Yukon Quest sled race is change between 2,000 and 3,000 booties. Booties are the small velcroed socks that protect the 56 feet on a dog team from ice, and the stunning frequency of changes is one of the many interesting facts in journalist Adam Killick’s Racing the White Silence.

The Yukon Quest is the ultimate dog sled race. Truer to the spirit of the North than the better known but more commercialized Alaskan Iditarod, the quest winds though 1,600 kilometres of brutal yet beautiful wilderness along the Yukon River between Whitehorse and Fairbanks. Run in February every year, it draws the cream of the North’s mushers and dogs.

Killick tells the story of the 2001 race in light and entertaining prose, introducing readers to the cast of characters at the race. These include mushers, who range from the owners of dog teams worth thousands of dollars to eccentrics who scrounge cast-off dogs and live in yurt tents; the dogs, who are treated like the champion athletes they are; and the surrounding country, with its rich history of gold rushes and its culture of rugged individualism. There are asides on the extraordinary physiology of sled dogs and the nature of northern outdoor toilets.

Killick manages to weave all of these facts into an engrossing tale. He is there at every checkpoint and has adventures of his own, like when he accepts a ride into the bush with some reckless snowmobilers. Racing the White Silence is as well-paced as a good sled race and, as the tension mounts, Killick draws the reader happily and inevitably toward the finish line.