HUMAN

Name: Larry Williams

Age: 74
Residence: Anchorage, Alaska

How many Years involved with Iditarod: One

First Year Ran Iditarod: 1995

Iditarod Role: Musher

Current Location: Anchorage, Alaska

Date of Photo: March 6, 2026
Temperature: 68F, indoors

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

What I love about running sled dogs is I really like the connection with the dogs. We have a gangline that connects the dogs to the sled, but to me that kind of emphasizes that gangline, the love and trust we have with each other. Because when we’re out on a long race and it’s 60 below zeros, it’s that trust and love that brings us through. And I really have missed that through the years since I stopped mushing.

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 moved up here in 1982 and I was maybe about 40 years old then. And so I joined the Chugiak Mushers Association and there I met Jerry Rachel who had done the Iditarod three times. He was kind of the middle of the pack musher, but he was home based and that’s how I got introduced. He gave me three dogs. That was my first team. And I loved those dogs, but they taught me so much. And we started camping together and that’s how I got really hooked on starting to get involved in mushing.

And from then I just kept hearing more and more about the Iditarod, read Libby’s book. And so that was the final nail that got me in, hooked in there. And from then on, and then it led to the race itself.

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

 

My most memorable experience running the Iditarod, I didn’t have to think twice about this because it had such an impression on me at the time. I was coming up to Shageluk Hills overlooking the frozen Yukon River. It was 60 degrees below zero and I was there with a friend of mine, Shell. We’d ran most of the race together. And so we pulled up there and got some frozen white fish for our dogs to eat. And I pulled out a… what was it? A Nutrageous candy bar. It was the only thing that wasn’t like concrete that I could actually eat.

And so we sat there with the Northern Lights above us in a display that I’ve never seen the same since. Every color in the rainbow seemed to be up in the sky. And they were dancing up there. And I tell you, I was just so taken aback, I just felt so at peace at that moment. And I totally believed the Inuit legend of that being there, the spirits of their ancestors dancing in the sky. And made such an impression on me that I can see it to this day.

What in life do you know for sure?:

 

So what I know for sure from running the Iditarod, and these are actually words that were taken from Hudson Stuck, the Episcopalian minister that ran, did a missionary work in Alaska in the 1900s, and he meshed all over the north in his part of his missionary work. And what he said was, and he traveled by dog slide, by the way. And so what he said was that when you’re traveling by dog team at 60 below, it’s all right, as long as it’s all right. And that is, after my experience at 60 Below, I would say he’s absolutely right on that. So that was what I learned for sure.