The dogs, 30 in all, bark and, leaping forward, pull the lines taut against the five separate komatiks, anchored by the men at the start line.
Gilbert's Bay sits rigid before the dogteams, and William's Harbour, accessible in winter by snowmobile, in summer by boat, sits rigid behind them.
The William's Harbour Heritage Sled Dog Race, a 20-mile trek around Duck Island and back, is about to begin.
On the start line are Dwayne Russell and Hayward Larkham, both of William's Harbour, Bill Russell and Melvin Kippenhuck, both of Port Hope Simpson, and Aubrey Russell of Mary's Harbour.
With the drop of an arm at the end of the sparse line of teams, the komatiks are released and the owners, some sitting, some lying on their stomachs, yelp at the dogs.
The dogs kick and, hustling through the snow, pull the lines.
A moment passes, the yelps become distant, and the 50-plus spectators at the start line hop on their snowmobiles, buzzing after the race.
Dog racing is a part of the culture here, in the blood.
"I seen my uncles and my cousins have dogs," Bill Russell said. "It'd be nice to see a few more other people, younger people (racing), but it's a job to get a lot of people interested; it's a nice bit of work.
"(But) you don't think about the culture when (you're racing), it's just, you like your dogs and you want to race. You don't think about the culture."
One time, before the drone of snowmobiles, dogteams were the only way to travel on the Labrador in the winter.
Graham and Leonard Russell were the last two men to own dogteams in William's Harbour, before snowmobiles became predominant in the 1970s.
The two men carted just about every working man and woman along the Labrador coast, including Sir Wilfred Grenfell.
Aubrey Russell said, when snowmobiles became popular, using dogs to navigate the Labrador landscape fizzled out.
"That's all we had dogs for then, same thing as ski-doo (now); if you wanted to come up here (Mary's Harbour) you come up on dogs, you wanted to go into the woods you went in on dogs, you wanted to go hunting you went on dogs, that was the only way, the only transportation you had for the longest time," Aubrey Russell said.
He started racing more than 40 years ago, but, like the practice, went on hiatus until the mid-90s. This year, he won the previous three races in St. Lewis, Port Hope Simpson and Charlottetown.
The Port Hope Simpson event was the Eric Rumbolt Memorial Sled Dog Race, an important name for the revival of the sport. Eric Rumbolt and Graham Russell brought the sport back to the coast in the 1980s.
For years, they were the only two racing, hitting the terrain all along the southeast coast. (In fact, the routes used today are the same as the routes used for races as far back as the 1960s).
"It's different now with all the ski-doos going," Graham said. "Never see no one around when we was racing, just go out with your dogs and get back over the line. There'd be a crowd on the line, they'd be waiting for you to come back."
After one race in Mary's Harbour, which Graham won, he said to Eric, "You was man enough to come race with me, so I'll share my prize."
"I got the race, and we only had one prize, a box of butter," Graham said, adding that prizes in those days ranged from a box of butter to a sack of sugar to a case of milk.
"So I turned around and shared my box of butter with him because we were in a race together."
Today, the atmosphere hasn't changed much.
Bill Russell crosses the finish line first to win top spot in the William's Harbour race; Hayward Larkham takes second, Aubrey Russell is third; Dwayne Russell finishes fourth and Melvin Kippenhuck is fifth.
"Today b'y, I'm very proud today," said Bill Russell, who started racing in William's Harbour when he was 13-years-old.
"Today was my first time in a couple years now that I won one.
"You cheer the dogs on and make them happy. Dogs have their good days and their bad days. Mine had a real good day today."
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