HUMAN

Name: Lisa Moore

Age: 55
Residence: North Pole, Alaska

Occupation:  Insurance Sales

First Year Ran Iditarod: 1994

How Many Years Involved With Iditarod: 25+

Iditarod Role: Musher, dog yard handler

Current Location: Fairbanks, Alaska

Date of Photo: June 19, 2026

Temperature: 78F outdoors

Question 1: What is it about running sled dogs that you love so much?

What I love about running sled dogs is– I really enjoyed training them, taking a young dog and training it up to be, you know, the best it could be. I didn’t necessarily enjoy racing as much. 
I just enjoyed the teaching of the younger dogs a lot more. That was what I found to be interesting as to what I could do to teach a dog to be what it was mentally and physically capable of doing.

 

Question 2: What, who or how and when & why did you first get involved running the Iditarod?

I got involved running the Iditarod because, well, I grew up in Nome. So every year I got to see the end of the Iditarod. And I was over in Nome and when it first started, you know, we moved over there in 1975. 
So I started running sled dogs as a kid and it morphed from there into junior Iditarod, and then, of course, you got to run Iditarod. So that’s kind of how I got involved in wanting to run the Iditarod.

 

Question 3:  Tell me about just one of your most memorable Iditarod experiences running the Iditarod.

My most memorable experience running Iditarod is, myself, Mark Black, and Don Bowers was heading through the Dallzell Gorge in 96, and I got elected to go first. I got, three quarters the way down one of the hills, and I came to an abrupt and screeching stop with a large resounding SNAP. And then I took off again, and I’m like, what broke? Instantly thought what broke? 
So I stopped, I counted snow hooks, and I had 3 when I started, and I only had 2 on the sled. One of them had fallen out. Stopped me. Broke the rope. And I knew that Mark Black was coming down behind me. 
The last thing I wanted was for him to roll over that snow hook. Set my hooks, ran back, fortunately, it was only maybe 150 feet– 200 feet up the hill. Found, by the grace of God, found the snow hook quickly. 
This was in the dark, mind you. And I grabbed the snow hook. About that time, I hear Mark, yelling at his dogs to slow the bleep, bleep, bleep down. 
And the light of his headlamp coming down the hill. I’m grabbing the snow hook up out of the ground and raced back to my dogs and managed to make it down to the bottom of that hill before he rolled over the top of me. That was the, one of the most memorable like, 0h- shit moments.

What in life do you know for sure?:

What I know for sure in life is that you kind of have to take it one day at a time and one obstacle at a time.