HUMAN

Name: Kim Troxell (formerly Teasley)

Age: 62

Residence: Fairbanks, Alaska

Occupation: Teacher

First Year Ran Iditarod: 1992

How Many Years Involved With Iditarod: 7-ish

Iditarod Role: Musher, trained Susan Butcher dogs

Current Location: Fairbanks, Alaska

Date of Photo: June 21, 2026

Temperature: 70F outdoors

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

What I love about running sled dogs is the training process. I especially really enjoy training puppies and yearlings and doing leader training and seeing their growth over the years, so that eventually you’re taking them on really long camping trips and teaching them to snack and bed down is really rewarding.

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

I got involved running the Iditarod because I was working up in the Brooks range and I was volunteering when I was in Bettles not doing field work with Rick Atkinson who was a Yukon Quest musher and he went to buy dogs from Susan Butcher and Susan asked him if he knew anybody that would be a good handler. At the time, I was working in Anaktuvuk Pass and I got a call out of the blue asking if I wanted a job. So of course I jumped on that.

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

 

My most memorable experience running the Iditarod was when my lead dog Pony started getting sick. He started getting diarrhea and it was as we were going into Nikolai and I knew I was not going to leave him on the trail and so I did something rather odd. I decided to put my lead dog on top of my sled and I mushed with him all the way to McGrath and was hand feeding him and giving him Lomotil to try to ease the diarrhea. And in McGrath, I was asked if I wanted to drop him and I said, “No, I’m not leaving my dog.” So I actually carried him almost the whole way to Ruby and embarrassingly, I ended up on the front page of the Anchorage Daily News with my lead dog riding on top of my sled, so everybody knew. So I got teased by a lot of mushers, but by the time I got to Ruby, he was all better and he led me the whole rest of the way.

And when we got to Shaktoolik, there was a lot of overflow ice and my dog actually ended up leading several teams across the bay because it was kind of scary for a lot of the rookie mushers. So it was really fun to see that.

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

 

What I know for sure in life is that things change, people change. If you’re going through a hard time, it will get better. I also know that I’m not the center of the universe and there’s nothing like being on the Iditarod trail to remind you of that because mother nature really doesn’t care what happens to you. And the last thing I know is that all the kindness you put into the universe does come back to you, you might just have to be patient.