4.5 stars rounded up to 5. I loved reading this in the winter & in community! I learned so much about dog sledding and Alaska. Paulsen is a master storyteller & hooks you from the first line. The loss of the half star is due to the fact that I felt there was a lack of history & meta narrative of the race. The book is all details—wonderful, breathtaking, thrilling detail!

“When I turned back, I was struck dumb, turned to stone in horror . . . The Gorge [Dalzell] lay below and before me. A narrow passage with a rushing stream in the middle that dropped, crashing down through huge boulders and jagged rocks. There was no trail but an ice ledge that ran along one side (it would switch to the other side later over a “bridge” made from a single log only wide enough for one dog at a time and one sled runner). It was not a trail so much as a chute, and might have been passable with a walking team under close control . . . I hit it wide open.”

 It is astounding to me that no human being has ever died running the Alaskan Iditarod. The incredibly brutal terrain, weather and distance (approximately 1,000 miles) seem impossible to overcome. But “outsider” (non-native Alaskan) and YA author Gary Paulsen entered this event in 1983 at age 44 and in his own words: “ . . . nothing, ever, would be the same for me again . . . “ This is his remarkable story. Although no humans have died in this race, around 150 sled dogs have died over the 49 years of the race’s existence. And once you meet Gary Paulsen’s lead dog Cookie, even one dog lost seems too many. PETA continues to protest this event because of some mushers’ mistreatment of these amazing animals and the general hardships they face in the race, but that is an issue for a different day and a different reviewer. I’m here to say that ‘Winterdance’ is an inspiring, intense read that taught me much about true endurance and dedication, written with zero egotism or smugness and loads of humility, humor, awe and love - deep love and infinite respect for the natural world and for all dogs . . . even Devil.

“From this point on there was no separation. It was not me driving the sled and the dogs pulling me . . . It was us. It was we - an almost glorious we.”

A stunning wilderness journey of discovery and transformation - lived and told by "the best author of man-against-nature adventures." Easily a 5-star book which landed on my favorite books shelf. It made me gasp, cry, laugh out loud, shutter, shiver, and have aches in my whole body. It made me love sled dogs and want to live in Alaska or at visit for weeks at a time. Gary Paulsen just may be added to my favorite author's list too.

Compelling! Read it in two sittings. Definitely recommend it.

This was a very fast listen, nicely narrated. It is essentially a series of dramatic stories about the authors’s training for the Iditarod, and his first running of that race. (I’m still not clear if he qualified or was knocked out for a faulty start in Anchorage.). It ends abruptly as he trains for his 3rd Iditarod- he doesn’t discuss his second run of that race. I love dogs, Alaska, and Iditarod tales, so 4 stars from me.

A wonderful book. There is exactly one word in this book that bugs me if you're the type of person who thinks that the word rape shouldn't be used unless you're referring to sexual assault, as I am, then you too might take issue with Paulsen when he says his Iditarod funds are "raped" as he makes his way to Alaska; otherwise this is by turns shocking, laugh-out-loud funny, stirring, amazing, utterly insane & all of that good stuff.

Exciting, unbelievable, inspiring. Loved it! This is a 5-star book, but it's got a handful of f-bombs thrown in at the end (which I have to say were appropriate for the situation and not gratuitous at all), which according to my own personal goodreads criteria knocks it down to 4 stars.

This book blew me away. I was so surprised by how much I liked it. I'm not a big dog person, but the way the author writes about his kinship with them is inspiring. The way he was able to translate the way he felt and changed from the experience is impressive.

Highly recommend.

Fast paced, entertaining, and full of odd moments about a man and his dogs preparing for and running the Iditarod. I think it must take a special kind of craziness to even want to do that race, and Paulsen shares it well.

This book fulfills the 2018 Popsugar reading challenge for a book about a sport.

Couldn’t stop reading tonight. I had to know how the insane, death wish race would finish for the author. I understood his passion- when you CAN’T stop doing something that allows your soul to sing. I understood his connection to his dogs. I understood his fear of a life without both. Excellent. #52-book-club 2023, prompt #1 A book with a subtitle

This was an amazing read. It details the first time Gary Paulsen ran the Iditarod. It is at times funny, at times scary and at times sad. I laughed out loud at points in this story. Well worth a read!

Paulsen’s name was familiar to me from his children’s books – a tomboy, I spent my childhood fascinated by Native American culture, survival skills and animals, and Hatchet was one of my favorite novels. I had no idea he had written books for adults, including this travelogue of competing in the Iditarod sled dog race across the frozen Alaska wilderness. Nearly half the book is devoted to his preparations, before he ever gets to Alaska. He lived in Minnesota and took time assembling what he thought of as a perfect team of dogs, from reliable Cookie, his lead dog, to Devil, whose name says it all. He even starts sleeping in the kennel with the dogs to be fully in tune with them.

The travails of his long trial runs with the dogs – the sled flipping over, having to walk miles after losing control of the dogs, being sprayed in the face by multiple skunks – sound bad enough, but once the Iditarod begins the misery ramps up. The course is nearly 1200 miles, over 17 days. It’s impossible to stay warm or get enough food, and a lack of sleep leads to hallucinations. At one point he nearly goes through thin ice. At another he’s run down by a moose. He also watches in horror as a fellow contestant kicks a dog to death.

Paulsen concludes that you would have to be insane to run the Iditarod, and there’s an appropriately feverish intensity running through the book. The way he describes the bleak beauty of the landscape, you can see how attractive and forbidding it was all at the same time. This is just the kind of adventurous armchair traveling I love (see also This Cold Heaven) – someone else did this, so now I don’t have to! I plan to follow it up with Adam Weymouth’s Kings of the Yukon, which won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award the year before last.

A favorite passage: “time was meaningless. All that counted was distance multiplied by difficulty. And cold.”

(Note: The author completed two races and was training for his third when a diagnosis of coronary heart disease ended his Iditarod career in his mid-forties. More than the obsession, more than the competition, he knows that he’ll miss the constant company of dogs. In fact, his last line is “How can it be to live without the dogs?”)