Iditarod. When I thought of the Arctic—if I thought
about it at all—I pictured exotic endangered ani-
mals and a distant, cold place out of reach to me
as a photographer. It was a realm of rugged men
with salt-and-pepper beards who owned bright
orange camping gear and were raised by even more
rugged fathers who taught their sons life lessons
while hunting and fishing. My father was a theater
producer from New York City. I learned life lessons
backstage, not in the backcountry.
Even so, it’s surprising that the Arctic intimidated
me. I spent most of my 20s documenting conflict and
social issues in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin
America, focusing especially on Mexico and the drug
war. I was committed to telling stories no matter the
risk. Then in 2011 I became part of a story—a tragedy—
in which the victims were my colleagues and I was a
survivor. In the aftermath I had a hard time finding
the inspiration I needed to love photography as I once
did. I kept working—I needed the money—but often
I was just going through the motions.
And so I took the assignment to photograph the
2014 Yukon Quest with no idea what to expect. A few
days later I was on a plane to Canada. We landed in
Whitehorse around midnight, the tarmac covered in
snow. When I touched my airplane window, I could
already feel the freezing cold air. I’d made it north;
my luggage had not. In it was everything I thought
I was going to need, including borrowed snow pants
that were too big for me, long underwear I hadn’t
worn since a high school ski trip, and a brand-new,
expensive puffy parka (I’d left the tag on so I could
return it once I got home). I was supposed to fly from
Whitehorse to Dawson City to photograph the race
first thing in the morning, and all I had was a gray
hoodie and a backpack full of camera equipment.
Inside the airport I explained my plight to the two
women behind the Air Canada desk. One of them
disappeared into the back office. She returned with
a navy blue Air Canada wool cardigan. The other
woman asked her husband to bring boots and a
jacket. She gave me her own gray down jacket, the
furry boots off her feet, and a pair of red fleece gloves.
It was still dark as I boarded the plane for Dawson
City later that morning. When the sun finally began
to rise, sweeping mountain ranges came into view.
They went on and on—jagged peaks of hot pink
and beige, mounds of gray and black, rolling hills of
endless white. I had never dreamed of a landscape
this magical and took pictures through the window
until a dense fog settled in.
As I got off the plane, the snow crunching beneath
my feet sparkled as if a million little children had
sprinkled it with all the glitter in the world. I spent
the ride to the hotel in silent awe as we drove by
lavender-tinted mountain ranges and frozen rivers
coated with a mosaic of blue and white ice. The entire
boreal forest was layered in what looked to me like
shimmering snow. I later learned that it’s called
hoarfrost—the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.SEVERAL YEARS AGO, I was offered a last-minute
assignment to photograph the Yukon Quest, a thou-
sand-mile sled dog race through the subarctic wil-
derness of Alaska and Canada. The race takes place
in the dead of winter along a route that was used
by sled dog teams during the gold rush to deliver
mail and supplies. The Yukon Quest is considered
one of the toughest sporting events on the planet:
Temperatures frequently reach minus 50°F, winds
can blow over 40 miles an hour, and the days are
so short that most of the race happens in the dark.
I did not know any of this before the assign-
ment. I’d never heard of the Yukon Quest or its
more famous counterpart in the United States, the
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