“It’s very addictive, dog sledding. And I just love being out in the wilderness. I love having a bond with the dogs. And I definitely don’t like the cold, being Australian, but you just embrace the suck I guess,” Iditarod musher Christian Turner said.
The 34-year-old spent seven years splitting his time in half. He was a dog musher in Alaska for six months of the year and a carpenter-builder in Australia for the other six months.
Turner hasn’t run the Iditarod since 2015. This year, he’s racing with an A-team owned by legendary musher Mitch Seavey.
“Mitch had a back injury,” Turner said. “He has a bad back because he’s been mushing for nearly 50 years. He’s quite an older guy, born into the race and he had surgery last year. And he’s got a phenomenal team but unfortunately the doctor said you shouldn’t be running. So, he posted on Facebook just a short movie of his team running and he said, ‘All revved up and nowhere to go.’ And I commented and said, I’ll run them. And he messaged me back and said, ‘Let’s make this happen.’ This is the first time his dogs have ever been run by someone else, his A-team. So, I feel pretty blessed and privileged to be able to run them.”
Christian says dog sledding is his passion, but his true loves are more than 7,000 miles away.
“Fortunately, I’ve been here for five weeks but unfortunately I feel like it should be a bit longer. But I couldn’t leave my work or my wife. And I’ve got a baby daughter at home. So, I did what I could in the amount of time I have,” Turner said.