The Arctic air was crisp and clear, an even 10 degrees [minus 12 degrees Celsius]. I sped across the snow, the powder rooster-tailing behind the sled. My dogs ran silent and efficient in the dry cold but looked back, tongues wagging and eyes coolly appraising, whenever I failed to pull my own up the hills. They were world-class athletes, able to run a hundred miles [161 kilometers] a day. Together, we hairpinned around spruce trees and willows. My quads burned as I worked to keep the sled upright, leaning hard through the curves to counterbalance the load. But more than once I dumped the sled or was left dragging through the snow on one knee, desperately trying to regain my footing.

I had always wanted to do this, to come to the remote north and travel by dogsled. While there are many outfitters running short trips in the environs of Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Nome, there are only a handful working the vast spaces north of the Arctic Circle. And Sourdough Outfitters, based in Bettles, a village nearly 200 miles [322 kilometers] northwest of Fairbanks, is among the few anywhere in Alaska that specialize in ambitious, weeklong expeditions.

My guides, Aliy Zirkle and Brandon Benson, a client named Tom Eckhoff, and I had set out from Bettles during the last days of winter, running northwest along rolling lowlands and serpentine rivers. We were headed deep into the Brooks Range, toward a spot where no one had run dog teams in more than half a century, the dramatic Arrigetch Peaks in Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve. The Brooks are largely built of sedimentary rock, but they are broken by the Arrigetch, a stunning granite intrusion of 6,000- to 7,200-foot [1,830- to 2,196-meter] polished spires. In summer, the peaks attract a small number of trekkers, most of whom get shuttled by floatplane from Bettles to a lake in the Alatna River valley before starting to hike. In winter, the snowy grandeur of the Arrigetch goes largely unseen.

I came to Bettles partly because I liked the idea of depending on dogs for a week, of temporarily joining the eons-long partnership between people and other species. "The dogs are totally dependent on you, and you're totally dependent on them," said Zirkle one morning in camp. "It's a unification that will bring you successfully down the trail." The dogs were eager to run. In Bettles, when I unsnapped my lead dog, Flood, from the stake line where he was tethered, he leaped across the snow, half-dragging me to his place at the sled. Zirkle is one of Alaska's top racers, and she'd run some of the same animals we were using to victory in last year's thousand-mile Yukon Quest.

We sped across the land for eight days, covering nearly 200 miles [322 kilometers]. Benson followed behind on a snowmobile, towing two sleds of heavy supplies and surplus dog food, out of sight and sound, only occasionally checking in. It was wild land. Fresh moose tracks crossed the trail repeatedly, and our first day out we passed a caribou spine protruding from the snow, then a wreckage of ptarmigan feathers. Wolf kill. At night, we secured the dogs to the stake lines. We cooked their food first, then ate our own dinners and camped comfortably in woodstove-heated tents beneath the auroras.

Before I found the cadence of my team and the finesse to truly control my sled, I wondered if I should have opted for one of Sourdough's shorter trips, say, a three-day flatland tour where the guests sleep in cabins each night. But I had a breakthrough on our third day, when we left the forest and descended onto the vastness of Iniakuk Lake. Zirkle whistled her dogs up to top speed and pulled far ahead. I glided the day's final miles alone with my dogs and the crunch of snow beneath the runners. Flood responded to my Gee! (right turn) and Haw! (left turn). I felt ready for the Arrigetch.

We spent that night comfortably warm at Paul and Mabel Shanahan's solitary homestead on Iniakuk Lake. Over breakfast, Mabel, an Inupiaq Eskimo, told us that, in the late 1940s, her grandfather and father were among the last people to run dog teams up the Alatna toward the Arrigetch. The next day, we ran our dogs north up a creek named after Mabel's great-grandfather, Old Man Tobuk, then crossed overland to the Alatna River and turned northwest, following a mountain drainage. We camped just below tree line. The midday air cooled to zero [minus 18 Celsius] as we ascended the next day, and the sun skimmed the high, knifed ridges. The animal tracks—wolf and moose—that had crossed our path diminished, then disappeared.

We reached the last willows around 3,500 feet [1,068 meters] and made our high camp beneath a looming headwall. We'd arrived at the Arrigetch. That night, the skies cleared, and the temperature dropped to 20 below [minus 30 Celsius]. We hunkered around a woodstove, telling stories, drinking cowboy coffee and laughing, pushing away the Arctic cold. Outside, in the moon shadows, the dogs lay tightly curled beneath the rough-hewn peaks. When we broke camp two days later, the dogs were excited to run, and the descent was fast and furious, snow exploding as we stomped the brakes. Over my shoulder, I could see the high peaks sink behind the lowland snows. And then the Arrigetch was gone.