The unnamed man, a chechaquo (newcomer to the Yukon),[2] sets out to hike through the forests bordering the Yukon River on a winter day where the temperature has fallen to −75 °F (−59 °C). Having ignored warnings against traveling alone in such conditions, he is accompanied only by a large husky dog. The animal's instincts warn it about the dangers of the extreme cold, but the dog reluctantly follows the man. As they follow the course of a frozen creek, the man is careful to avoid patches of thin ice hidden by the snow. His goal is to reach a group of prospectors (referred to as "the boys") at their camp by six o'clock that evening.
At half-past noon, the man stops and builds a fire so he can warm up and eat his lunch. Shortly after resuming his hike, he accidentally breaks through the ice and soaks his feet and lower legs, forcing him to stop and build another fire so he can dry himself. Having chosen a spot under a tree for this fire, he pulls twigs from the brush pile around it to feed the flames; the vibrations of this action eventually cause a large amount of snow to tumble down from the branches overhead and extinguish the fire. The man quickly begins to lose sensation in his extremities and hurries to light another fire, now starting to understand the warnings about the life-threatening danger posed by the extreme cold. He lights the fire, igniting all of his matches and burning himself in the process due to the numbness in his hands. While trying to remove a piece of moss from the fire, he inadvertently pokes the burning twigs apart, extinguishing them.
With no way to start another fire, the man thinks of killing the dog and using its body heat to save himself, but his hands are so stiff that he can neither strangle the animal nor draw his knife to cut its throat. Finally, he tries to restore his circulation by running toward the camp, but stumbles and falls multiple times in the snow. The man feels the cold gradually freezing him to his core, and he ultimately falls asleep and dies of hypothermia. He imagines himself standing with "the boys" as they find his body. The dog leaves the body after dark to find food and shelter at the camp.
