Bethel's own Pete Kaiser has become the winningest musher in Kuskokwim 300 Sled Dog Race (K300) history. The scene on the Bethel riverfront on the morning of Sunday, Jan. 25 was electric as family, friends, and fans cheered the hometown hero across the finish line at 10:40 a.m.
"Just reminiscing about the last 20 years and how we got here," Kaiser told KYUK at the finish line.
Kaiser now has 10 first-place finishes in the race, breaking the nine-win record held for years by mushing legend Jeff King.
In this year's race from Bethel to Aniak and back, Kaiser said that victory never felt assured.
"I thought, wow … there [were] six or seven different teams that could maybe pull this off if they kept having the run they were having. So no, I wasn't super confident," Kaiser said.
Kaiser said that mushers' initial expectations of a perfect trail were tempered by challenging snow conditions in the upper section of the race between Kalskag and Aniak. But he said his 8-year-old lead dog, Delmer – who has run the Iditarod and K300 at least half a dozen times since he was a pup – was up to the task.
"Haven't noticed any age with him at all. He's just as good as he ever was," Kaiser said.
Second-place musher Riley Dyche of Big Lake crossed the K300 finish line a half-hour after Kaiser – his second year in a row chasing Kaiser down the final stretch of the trail to Bethel. Dyche said that he ran nearly the exact same team that he did in the 2025 race, but that he had to fight harder this time around due to trail conditions upriver.
"It was a soft, deep, kind of swimming in sugar from the moose running up the trail. And that takes a big toll, stress-wise, on a dog team," Dyche said.
Roughly a half-hour after Dyche, Akiak veteran musher Mike Williams Jr. took third place. He said that he had been waiting to see how a newly added pair of yearlings and a pair of two-year-olds would handle their first K300.
"They ran hard, the dogs poured their hearts out out there, and they gave me all they had," Williams Jr. said.
It's Williams Jr.'s 15th time running the race. He placed second back in 2011, and came in fifth in 2025. He said that he decided to sign up for this year's race at the last minute. The extreme weather and extended power outages in Akiak hampered training. But when he saw 17-year-old Charlie Chingliak of the nearby village of Akiachak sign up to race, Williams Jr. said that he couldn't resist.
Another local talent, Bethel born and raised musher Jessica Klejka, crossed the finish line just six minutes after Williams Jr. to take fourth place. She said that snowless trail conditions around Knik, where she currently mushes, made training extra challenging this year.
"It made you wonder if you wanted to be a musher, because you were behind them on a four-wheeler," Klejka said. "But this was worth it. We did it."
The last time a female musher placed in the top five in the K300 was DeeDee Jonrowe's third-place finish in the 2002 race.
Rounding out the top five mushers, 2023 Iditarod champion Ryan Redington of Knik came in 20 minutes after Klejka. Redington is the grandson of Iditarod founder Joe Redington Sr., and the first member of his famed mushing family to win the title. This year was his third K300, and his first top-five finish.
The home stretch
The 2026 K300 was marked by mushers who got their required hours of rest out of the way early in the race, packing the field for the return trip to Bethel. Among more than a dozen mushers who left Aniak fully rested and were able to blast through Kalskag on Saturday evening, the race for first quickly took shape.
Kaiser, Dyche, Williams Jr., and 18-year-old mushing phenom Emily Robinson – who would later fall behind and place seventh – played a game of leap frog coming out of Kalskag. But close to midnight, about 20 miles out from Tuluksak, Kaiser made his move, putting more than 2 miles between himself and Dyche before taking his 4-hour mandatory rest in Tuluksak.
In the final 50-mile push to Bethel, Kaiser did what he does best, holding onto a commanding lead.
"Once we're on the home stretch and have a little lead, you know, I think we're hard to beat," Kaiser said.
A day before the race, Kaiser said that it was still hard to wrap his head around tying King's all-time record in 2025.
"As a kid growing up watching the race and then starting to race it myself, I thought Jeff's record was untouchable," Kaiser said.
Now, Kaiser has accomplished in the span of a decade and a half what took King 25 years.
Kaiser's all-time win record has, for the time being, established hometown dominance for the race. His other record of five consecutive K300 titles is likely to hold for years to come.
Kaiser will earn at least $30,000 from a $200,000 total purse, the largest mid-distance race purse in the world. Second-place Dyche stands to earn at least $20,000, and third-place Williams Jr. will receive at least $15,000.
Angela Denning interviewed mushers for KYUK at the K300 finish line for this story.
This story has been updated as of Jan. 25, 2026.
Copyright 2026 KYUK
