HUMAN

Name: Joe Carpenter

Age:  78

Residence: Chugiak, Alaska

Occupation: Retired Nurse

First Year Ran Iditarod:   1986

How Many Years Involved With Iditarod: 30

Iditarod Role: Musher

Current Location: Iditarod Headquarters, Wasilla, Alaska

Date of Photo: June 27, 2026

Temperature: 62F outdoors

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

What I love about running sled dogs is in the day that I was doing that, it seemed like there was some kind of magic in being connected to the dogs and what they’re able to do. The essence of being out on the open trail with them really was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. And as I learned more, that experience deepened and the comradery with the hundreds of sled dogs that I raised changed me i thought of myself as a dog musher at that point and still do. But that experience of being out on the open trail with them and one-on-one with them, training them, raising them, interacting with them unlike anything I’ve ever done, ever.

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

 

I got involved running the Iditarod because I’ve always been into sled dogs. I grew up running sprint dogs and then when I was a teenager, I did Junior Iditarod a couple times. And after I finished Junior Iditarod I was hooked, I wanted to run the Iditarod.

I got involved running the Iditarod because of encountering the Iditarod in one of the first years that I was in Alaska after I moved here from Texas.

I went to the start at Settlers Bay, and it was like nothing I’d ever seen in my life. And I drug my girlfriend then, now my wife around with me, and she chides me today that she didn’t think I even knew she was there.

I was enthralled with everything that was happening the way that the drivers were harnessing their teams and getting them ready to start. It literally captivated me in a way I didn’t understand. And it wasn’t until 1986 that I fielded my first dog team to the Iditarod.

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

 

The most memorable experience of running the Iditarod occurred in 1993 in the hills going into Shageluk. I stopped my dog team. We’d been running all night out of Iditarod. Sun was coming up behind me. Dogs needed a rest, so I stopped the team on top of a hill. The sun came up, and I just started drinking it in.

I turned around and looked at the dog team. And the dogs, some of them were standing, some of them were laying down, some of them were alert, some of them were licking their feet. I looked at those dogs, and I knew that instant that this team was going all the way to Nome.

And the leader that I had, Chipper, was the most amazing leader a guy could have ever had. He was a Joe Runyan dog, and he had it in his soul. He led the whole way. He wouldn’t let me move him back in the team. He argued with me when I moved him back, and I lost that argument. And he led me all the way to Nome in ’93.

Question 4: What in life do you know for sure?

 

What I know in life for sure is we’re the sum of our experiences. And at my age now, the things that I’ve done in my life, Iditarod is way up there. And it changed me.hat I know in life for sure is got to be happy, and I know I’m always happy when I’m on a dog sled or involved with dogs.