HUMAN
Name: Dale Swartzentruber
Age: 73
Residence: Wasilla, Alaska
Occupation: Retired from: Farm Management, Lodge Owner, Glacier Sled Dog Tour Manager
First Year Ran Iditarod: 1977
How Many Years Involved With Iditarod: 20-ish
Iditarod Role: Musher, handler, volunteer
Current Location: Palmer, Alaska
Date of Photo: September 5, 2026
Temperature: 65F indoors
Question 1: What is it about running sled dogs that you love so much?
What I love about running sled dogs is dogs are better than humans. I enjoy being around them. They always love to see you. They don’t judge you. I also love just being out in the wide-open country, hearing the squeak of the runners, having these experiences where the wind is about to blow you away.
It’s just amazing to be out with these guys. And when I first started, I only had about eight dogs and so I was really close to all of them.
Question 2: What, who, how and when & why did you first get involved running the Iditarod?
I got involved in running the Iditarod because I had some dogs. They were just trap line dogs— wood hauling dogs. And I hadn’t really thought about running the Iditarod until Joe Redington came up with this thing and wanted to try to keep sled dogs as part of the native culture. And I had this thing rolling around in my head, but never really decided to do it until this… I think what really pushed me over the edge was I took a run from Shageluk to Grayling.
It was the first time I’d gone all the way there in one day and these puppies were like five months old. I had I think eight dogs at the time. And I got to this one area where it was a big flat and I was going through the willows and the dogs were just flying and happy and going and I thought, man, this is what I’m supposed to do. I should be doing this. This is what I need to do. I got about halfway to Grayling and I had a big old thermos of tea in my sled and I tied off to a tree. I didn’t even have a snow hook then. I just had a rope. I tied to a tree and took out my tea and I put the cup on it, poured a cup full of tea and Buckey & Sassafras and the rest of them just started hammering the line, jerking and screaming and hollering and yelling.
Halfway to Grayling, I thought they was going to be tired. I was like, “All right, you guys, you want to go?” I dumped my tea out, put the lid back on and took off and went the rest of the way to Grayling. And that’s where I started thinking about the Iditarod. I’m like, “I got eight dogs. I could run the Iditarod.” Actually, I ended up with a little puppy team and I borrowed three dogs and ran the Iditarod.
Question 3: Tell me about just one of your most memorable experiences running the Iditarod.
My most memorable experience running the Iditarod was the Dalzell Gorge. It was the first year that the trail went through the Gorge because overflow on the Kuskokwim was so bad. I don’t know who put it in, but it wasn’t much of a trail. And on top of the hill, there was a place they said that it would get bad when you saw, it was a tent or something. I saw that tent and then by the time I got to the tent, I had already broken the brake off of my sled, so I didn’t have a bake. And then right after the tent, it started dropping into the gorge. My sled was on the side and I was dragging most of the way with the sled on the side. My sled on the side was my brake all the way through the gorge. Sometimes I’d get upright.
Most of the time it was on the side. I came down one steep drop. There was this big tree. There were two trails. One went left, one went right. There was a dog team wrapped around that tree. It was Dinah Knight’s team that had shattered their sled. The dogs went on one side, sled went on the other. Sled flew into a million pieces and there were dogs here and there. I don’t know how we got through that, but somehow we got through it and made it down to the river. There was shelf ice, there was open water, there was crossing open water. There’s everything you can imagine that you don’t really want to go through, but that was probably the most memorable. And then hitting the river and taking that last run into Rohn had to be one of the most memorable things on Iditarod for me.
Question 4: What in life do you know for sure?
What I know for sure in life, the biggest one in life is the standard answer, death and taxes. The other thing I know for sure in life is that I love my wife and my wife is always going to love me.