HUMAN
Name: Mark Scott Merrill
Age: 78
Residence: Florence Lake, Willow, Alaska
Occupation: Retired Construction
First Year Ran Iditarod: 1988
How Many Years Involved With Iditarod: 10 years
Iditarod Role: Musher, Volunteer
Current Location: Willow Museum, Willow, Alaska
Date of Photo: March 7, 2026
Temperature: 68F, indoors
Question 1: What is it about running sled dogs that you love so much?
Running sled dogs and being involved with that. Besides bringing up both of my daughters as sprint mushers and then Junior Iditarod, it’s just your connection with nature, and being out on the trails, and going on overnighters, and all that kind of stuff. And we had sled dogs for about 20 years. And my daughters loved it, and my wife ran too, so that was good.
Question 2: What, who or how and when & why did you first get involved running the Iditarod?
Well, I got involved with running the Iditarod because I was in the dog mushing community of Alaska, I guess. I knew Bob Chlupach real well and we exchanged dogs quite a bit. And I used one of his leaders when I ran and he used my leaders when he ran, and David Aisenberry and a few others.
So we trained, and my daughter Malia ran Junior Iditarod in ’85, ’86, and ’87. And the dogs were getting a little older, but I thought, “Well, I’m going to run Iditarod.” I wanted to get involved with that too. So I ran in ’88. I’d love to run again. It was a terrible year for construction, and we had to change houses and all that, so I never did. But your connection out there with nature and the northern lights and the moose and wolves and everything else was just terrific, except when they run you over. I’ve been run over by moose three times.
Question 3: Tell me about just one of your most memorable Iditarod experiences running the Iditarod.
Probably my most memorable experience running Iditarod was actually, I have many, but this was near the finish out of White Mountain. And the checker told me, “Yeah, it should be an easy trail. It’s only 77 miles in good weather.” Well, I got up into the Topkok Hills and the wind started blowing and it was blowing so hard by the time I hit the coast, that it was blowing the sled over and the dogs, and I had to go back up and camp on the mountain. For three days, nobody went by. So I was in winds 50 and 60 miles an hour for three days at 30 below zero. And I’m surprised my dogs all made it, but they did.
The third day, the wind started dying down a little bit, so I started getting ready to go. And I was on a crest of a top of a mountain, going down to the ocean, and I heard a helicopter I thought, chop, chop, chop. All of a sudden, here come a Black Hawk helicopter looking at me, and I’m pointing at myself down the trail. So they were out looking for me because nobody had seen me for three days.
And so then later I learned that Joe May was race marshal that year, and he was ex-military. So they spotted me from satellites and sent the helicopter out to verify that I was there. And so that was pretty interesting. So I made it on up to Johnson’s shelter cabin, and I was there for about 12, 18 hours while it was blowing really hard too. But then the guy from Nome Radio there come out, opened the door and says, “Have you seen my dogs?” Well, first of all, he says, “Are you Mark Merrill?” And, “Yeah. “And so he had went out to look for me. And he’s listening to his radio about midnight and he says, “Well, it’s reported they found you and you’re okay.” He says, “How’s that? Because I’m the first one to see you.” So he didn’t know about the helicopter. But yeah, that was really something, surviving that extreme cold.
What in life do you know for sure?:
What I know for sure in life is that it’s good to love the Lord, and enjoy this world that He gave us, but also the beauty of Alaska, the outdoors in Alaska. We homesteaded in 1959, and that was a beautiful life up on way above tree line on Hatcher Pass, and proven up on that homestead, and plowing the fields, and on and on. But it’s a good place, I think, to raise your family, and to interact with other frontier people in Alaska.