As team after team heads out onto the frozen Yukon River from the historic village of Circle City, the handlers driving the big dog trucks now set off in the opposite direction for a 1,000-mile drive to Dawson City, where the teams will take a mandatory 36-hour layover before setting out on the second half of the race. The mushers are now into territory only accessible by air, snowmachine, or, of course, dogsled.

The support teams have a long two-day drive ahead, over icy mountains, through blowing snow and howling winds, but also through some of the most spectacular scenery to be found anywhere. From Circle City they'll backtrack along the Steese Highway to Fairbanks, re-crossing the 3,685-foot Eagle Summit and 3,640-foot Rosebud Summit, to Fairbanks, where they'll turn south and east onto the Alaska Highway.

The road passes through many small communities between Fairbanks and the Canadian border: North Pole, Salcha, Delta Junction, Dot Lake, Tok -- a major junction where the Glenn Highway heads south to Anchorage -- and then only the occasional lodge, most closed for the winter, until they reach the small border community of Beaver Creek, Yukon Territory. There's not much there... the Canadian customs office and border crossing, a couple of lodges with gas pumps out front, the town's population is only 120 or so.

Leaving Beaver Creek, the Alaska Highway heads into the remote territory north of the Wrangell, Kluane, and Nutzotin mountain ranges, an area long notorious for some of the coldest winter temperatures on record; at Snag the lowest temperature ever recorded anywhere in Canada was registered in February, 1947: -81.4 F / -63 C (the record for Alaska was set at Prospect Creek, a pipeline camp near Bettles, in 1971: -80 F / -62.8 C). It's beautiful country, crossing the glacial White and Donjek Rivers, and offering spectacular views to the south of the Icefield Ranges of the St. Elias Mountains, the highest in Canada, with seven peaks over 16,000 feet, including Canada's highest mountain, Mount Logan, at 19,545 feet.

The highway winds around the edge of the mostly frozen Kluane Lake, the largest in the Yukon Territory at over 150 square miles. The falling-in log cabins of Silver City, a 1904 trading post, roadhouse, and North West Mounted Police barracks, sits on the eastern shore of the lake. The highway crosses 3,293-foot Boutiller Summit and drops into Haines Junction under a panoramic view of the skyscraping Auriol Range, then finally turns north toward Whitehorse, 100 miles away.

Just before reaching Whitehorse, actually skirting the edge of the city limits, the Yukon Highway 2, also known as the North Klondike Highway or the Klondike Loop, heads off to the left and soon crosses the Takhini River bridge, a favorite viewing spot when the teams cross under it in a week or so. This is where the drivers once again meet the Yukon River -- it's off to the right -- and they'll more or less follow it all the way to Dawson City, 323 miles away. The highway runs alongside the 40-mile-long Lake Laberge, which Robert Service made famous in his epic poem, "The Cremation of Sam McGee":

"The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, but the queerest they ever did see, was that night on the marge of Lake Laberge I cremated Sam McGee."