Winter & Ski Home Winter Activities La Grande Odyssée International Sled-Dog Race

The Toughest Sled Dog Race

In the high valleys and villages of France winter is a time of outdoor adventure. We look at the latest and most demanding of them all - la Grande Odyssée….

Sled dog in transit trailer.

At minus 15ºC the snow lay deep underfoot, with a lot more expected to fall before daylight returned to the Haute Maurienne Vanoise. The only respite from the bitter chill was a huge, crackling bonfire, around which we huddled while thawing numbed hands with wobbly plastic cups of reviving vin-chaud. Suddenly a cry pierced the stillness: ‘Il est la..!’ Peering out across the valley floor at first we saw nothing, then as the eyes grew accustomed to the inky blackness a faint glimmer appeared in the distance, like a fallen star. But it was moving, growing in size and turning to head in our direction. Less than a minute later a mysterious, copiously-padded figure driving a spirited team of sled-dogs glided into view, a stirring sight lit fleetingly by the flames of the fire and greeted with a rousing cheer from the crowd. Then, as suddenly as it arrived, the team had vanished into the gloom.

The Grande Odyssée event began in 2005, and has attracted some of the top names in international competitive dog-sledding to the French Alps. The first leg kicks off among the mountains and valleys of the Portes du Soleil, home of ski stations like Avoriaz, Châtel and Morzine. The teams are well into their stride by Week Two and the second round of stages in the Haute Maurienne Vanoise.

The various stages here cover the entire length of the valley plus a demanding assortment of the steeper terrain which distinguishes the Grande Odyssée from established long-distance sledding events in Alaska and Finland. In daytime the valley offers some challenging skiing, but it’s a breeze compared to the lot of the mushers, who must guide their teams around the wild and rugged terrain against the clock, in glacial overnight temperatures and with only a battery-powered head light to pierce the darkness. That’s on a good night; a bad one could bring heavy snowfalls and winds capable of whipping things into a blizzard before you know it. At times like this it can get lonely out there.

L-R: Competitors line up for a photo-call in Lanslebourg before the next leg of the gruelling event begins; a team comes into view beside the Lac du Mont Cenis.

But the mushers, like their enthusiastic mountain hosts, are a different breed, as I discovered when I left the early morning chill of the valley behind and took the ski lift up to the Col to meet the teams between stages. I hitched a ride to the checkpoint in a military snow-cat in the company of some of the 13th Battalion of Chasseurs Alpins stationed in the Haute Maurienne. On the way we passed the old Franco-Italian frontier point, where a modest marker stone dated 1861 sits beside a forlorn monument to the Alpine troops who fell in past conflicts. The drop-off point was a giant command complex constructed entirely of snow just for the event by the Chasseurs.

Beyond the extraordinary ‘Base polaire’ lies the vast, shimmering expanse of the Lac du Mont Cenis, whose dark waters can freeze solid for months in winter. A few minutes’ determined trudge brought me to a quiet spot to await the arrival of the teams at the end of a particularly gruelling stage which began at 5am down in the village of Lanslebourg. The bleak, pre-dawn start was immediately followed by a 550m hairpin ascent to the Col du Mont Cenis on the appropriately-named Escargot, Europe’s longest green-graded ski-run. Beneath the snow lay the old road to Turin. Not long ago horse-drawn coaches and wagons heading over the Col had to be dismantled and their harnesses and loads transferred onto mules. Wealthier or less fit passengers would be carried on a trek which could take five hours.

Today skiers and winter visitors are whisked up in minutes on a high-speed chair-lift but climbs like these remain physically demanding for the mushers, who on the steeper sections will often run behind the sled to assist the dogs. Having made it over the 2000m Col and circumnavigated the lake, the course nudged the Italian border before entering the remote Vallon de Savalin. The first sighting of the leaders coming into view on their return run around the lake was hypnotic, an anonymous cluster of minute dots silhouetted against the snow in the distance slowly forming into the outline of an approaching team. The final, near-silent glide-past gave little hint of the heroic efforts which had brought them this far. After crossing the finish line at the Base polaire, that morning’s stage checkpoint, the mushers unharnessed the dogs from the sleds and carefully checked their condition before settling them down in a tethered line on the snow with food, drink and a snug bed of straw. Only after these essential duties were completed could the mushers finally get to feed themselves and try to unwind before for the next stage.

Above, L-R: Nicolas Vanier greets tired mushers at the end of a night stage; feed time at the Base Polaire; booties are de riguer; Canadian musher Grant Beck.

The pressure is relentless, but I managed to catch up briefly with Canadian Grant Beck, a major player in international endurance dog-sledding. Grant is a fifth-generation musher, and got his first dog when he was just six years old. Now he has two hundred at his Adventure Centre outside Yellowknife, capital of the North West Territories. “In Canada they stage the races in daytime, but I train them at night. I don’t really like it, but they do and in a race it’s all about the dogs…”, he says. “They know what they’re doing, determine their own pace and also recognise trails. Theyre all different, often with very picky tastes in food… for this team we have ten different diets to consider. And they can burn up 5-8000 calories in a 100 mile race”.

For Grant and five other competitors from across the Atlantic, just getting here was something of a Marathon. “We had a four-day drive all the way down to Chicago to fly them out on an Air France cargo plane which allowed us to see to the dogs during the long flight to Paris”. After a quick photo-call we shook hands and I left him to prepare for another journey, the second of the day’s stages. The sun had already dipped beyond a nearby peak, and there was a sudden, dramatic change of mood as an ominous chill returned to the mountains.

Above: The closing awards ceremony, with fellow mushers lined up around outright winner Jessie Royer; Centre foreground is President Henry Kam

Grant and the other mushers battled through a major snowstorm on the final night which brought visibility down to 10m and kept even the mountain piste-groomings grounded. With the planned timing of the stage abandoned in the interests of just getting the teams safely back down the mountain, the adventure took on a new dimension, particularly for the leader Jessie Royer.

Jessie later recalled the epic descent with awe and admiration for the dogs: “I went out, hooked up my dogs and took off. I was the first out so there was no trail. It was dark, snowing and blowing hard, and at times I couldn’t even see Leo, my best storm-leader dog ahead of me, but I had total faith in him to get us off that mountain”.

And so they did. As Grant Beck said, “It’s all about the dogs…”.

©The full article by Roger Moss appeared in Ski & Board Magazine, February 2007.