HUMAN

Name: Ken Anderson

Age: 53

Residence: Fairbanks, Alaska

Occupation: Dalton Highway Truck Driver

First Year Ran Iditarod: 1999

How Many Years Involved With Iditarod: 10 or so years on and off

Iditarod Role: Musher

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 just getting the dogs to work together as a team. There’s moments where it seems like you don’t even have to be the lead dog. All dogs are so engaged and focused and one of purpose that you could stick your wheel dog up in lead, or your team dog up in lead. And they’d go just as good as your best leader. And that’s like the apex of what we’re doing out there. And those moments are kind of rare, very rare, but it’s pretty special when that happens.

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

I got involved running the Iditarod because when I was a little kid growing up in Minnesota, my parents actually had sled dogs. And that was a few dogs, a few Malamutes and we would do winter camping trips. And those were some of my best early childhood memories. And then my dad bought me this picture book on the Iditarod. It was from I think the ’84 Iditarod, and something just clicked and I just said, “I’m going to run that.”
I don’t know what else I’m going to do with my life, but that’s like a kind of a promise I made to myself at that young age. And I didn’t really tell people about it. I just lingered in the back of my conscience that someday I would do it. And yeah, wound up doing it 17 times.

 

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

 

I think my most memorable experience running the Iditarod is pretty much every year going over the Blueberry Hills between Unalakleet and Shaktoolik. And if it’s clear, you can look out and see Besboro Island just shimmering out there. And it’s a long ways away and sometimes it shifts and it looks different each year, because it’s sort of a mirage effect. And then also when we go around Norton Sound and we are coming in getting close to Elim. Between Moses Point and Elai, you climb up a long grade, and it’s right along the bluff. And you can overlook all of Norton Sound, and it’s just so beautiful.

 

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

 

What I know for sure in life is that the more you know, it seems like the less you know. Yeah, I mean some philosopher, I can’t remember who, I can’t quote who it was, but he said “The greatest wisdom is to know that you know not”.