It's now 2.30 a.m. in Central, a very tiny community in the middle of nowhere, Alaska, and one of the checkpoints on the Yukon Quest dog-sledding race. We've been waiting for a few hours now for Saul, the musher whose team I'm travelling with, to arrive. He should have been here at about 11 o'clock, but there's a storm on the mountain, the trail conditions are atrocious, and a group of four or five mushers has not turned up when they should have done. So it's going to be a long night ahead.