The cruellest miles

It is 1925. The goldrush town of Nome sits on the edge of the Bering Sea, two degrees below the Arctic Circle, and there are few more forbidding places on earth. When signs of a diptheria epidemic broke out in town, Dr Curtis Welch knew it was the biggest crisis of his life. Supplies of the serum were dangerously low and it was winter. The entire town would be in danger if the medicine didn't arrive in time. He ordered a quarantine and sent an urgent appeal for help. The port was icebound; the nearest railhead was almost 700 miles away across mountains, rivers, and the treacherous ice of Norton Sound; aeroplanes of the time had not been tested in such conditions. A relay of dog sleds was set up, and the drivers, many of them Native Alaskans, set off at night into a blizzard at sixty degrees below zero, often trusting their lead dogs to find the trail under feet of driven snow. It was a desperate, death-defying race against time.