When Ron Kaiser talks about the year his son won the Iditarod, it’s like he’s transported back to a particular moment — a place along the finish line chute.
“The Happiness was thick in the air. There was 60 or 80 Bethel people that had flown in,” Kaiser remembered. “It was just unreal. Never had a feeling like it.”
In 2019, Ron’s son, Pete Kaiser, was the Iditarod champion. That year, the finish line was full of community members that had chartered a plane from Bethel at the last minute to welcome their musher into Nome. Back home in Bethel, though, Kaiser said it was an even bigger deal.
“Airport full of people, people were lining the highway going to his house. They brought the fire truck up,” Kaiser said. “It was just something he could have done without, probably, because he’s not one to look for the fanfare. But it was really cool.”
The City of Bethel declared the day he won a town holiday — Pete Kaiser Day.
“And you know it, people in the [Yukon-Kuskokwim] Delta just loved it,” Kaiser said. “The fact that we have a champion from Bethel and from Southwest Alaska, and a Yup'ik, you know, of Yup'ik descent, musher.”
Kaiser remembered after that time, he met someone in Bethel who was excited to learn he was the champion’s dad.
“She goes, 'Man, he sure made a lot of people happy around here,'” Kaiser recalled.
Now, with 15 Iditarods under his belt, Pete hasn’t been heading into the training season with the race in mind. Instead, he said it’s a decision he’ll make year by year based on the pace of life and what he and his family can accommodate.
After not running in 2025, Ron Kaiser said that his son’s decision to enter the race felt a little extra exciting for the family, and it made a lot of other people happy too.
Kaiser said that since his son registered for the race, he’d heard from lots of people — people the family didn’t even know that well — that they were excited to see him running. Kaiser said that it’s like having your own horse in the race, someone to cheer for that gives the big event more personal stakes.
For others, though, it’s simply about seeing someone you know do something big. That’s true for Akiak musher Mike Williams Jr.
“It made the race quite, quite a bit more exciting,” said Williams Jr. “I followed it a lot more than I would have had to not run. Me and Pete go way back.”
Williams Jr. said that he and Pete have been racing against each other since they were in high school in the early 2000s.
“The early years of my racing, I would find him where he's at in the starting line, and I would either plan to follow him or try to stay ahead of him,” Williams Jr. said with a chuckle.
Their careers on the sled evolved nearly side by side, and in 2010 they ran their first Iditarod together. In 2012, both placed high on the leaderboard — Kaiser came in fifth place and Williams Jr. came in eighth.
Now, Williams Jr. said, watching the race as an alum of its trail, following Pete and the other mushers' race is like remembering a dream.
“Just imagining the trail, what mushers are going through and imagining the scenery, so that was fun to follow along [...] vicariously through the mushers,” Williams Jr. said.
Under the burled arch in Nome, Pete's family and close friend stood bundled, peeking out down Front Street for a sign of their finisher. Among them was Iditarod alum Andy Angstman, who grew up in Bethel with Pete.
“I finagled a way to come up for one night, and the plane just landed, like, literally, like, 10 minutes ago,” Angstman said.
Angstman said that he was among the first there to congratulate his friend. He says it’s also big to see a piece of home on the largest mushing stage.
“It's just so exciting to come and see Bethel represented here. And it's good for our town, and it's, it's, you know, my hometown, Pete's hometown,” Angstman said. “I hope he keeps doing it. I don't know if he will, but, you know, I wanted to make sure I was here in 2026.”
After sliding in for his ninth place finish, Pete received a warm welcome of embraces from his pieces of home. Online, hundreds of fans from the Yukon-Kuskokwim (Y-K) Delta peppered comments with lifted hands emojis and words of congratulations. There’s a lot of hometown love for Pete, but also for the sport itself.
“We have such a strong mushing community out there,” Pete said. “And you know, more of its based towards the shorter races and stuff. But there has been several of us over the last 15 to 20 years, myself, Mike Williams Jr., and Richie [Diehl] that have made quite an effort at Iditarod. I hope there's some more mushers out there, and young kids that could potentially even, even if it's just to do one, you know, to experience traveling across the state with the dog team is pretty special. Logistically, it's hard to pull off, but I think as a community and region, I'm sure we could support somebody that wants to do it and try to get them here,” Pete said.
It’s something Pete hopes more mushers from the region, including the younger generations, can get to take part in.
