This musher wasn't born on a dogsled

Neighbor/BOB MARTINSON/Frontiersman reporter

Born in Switzerland in 1958, Martin Buser came from a town called Winterthur, pronounced Wintertour. Imagine that.

"Hey, maybe that was why I was destined to come to Alaska," Buser said.

A winter tour is what he's known for, but he wasn't born on a dogsled, and there is a lot more to the man than what most people read about in newspapers or see on TV.

"Well, I was born there, but lived in the Zurich area mostly, with an exception of a year in Iran, because my parents had moved over there when I was about five," he said. "It was kind of cool living in a desert; Dad was an orthopedic surgeon and he went around training local doctors to take over the hospitals that they started and they lived in Africa for a few years, too, before I was born.

"One of my most memorable childhood experiences was seeing a man hanging in the gallows out in the street in Isfahan, Iran," Buser said. "The Shah of Iran was in power at that time and my parents had warned me that I had to be careful because some people would be traveling around and they could have somebody smuggling drugs or whatever, get into their luggage and then they'd get caught, have a trial that lasted about 24 hours and then they'd be hanging out there in the gallows the next day."

The family moved down the Western coast of Africa and around the Middle East, until eventually moving back to Switzerland.

Buser loved animals from an early age and the family always had a lot of animals while he was growing up. He became an expert with turtles and other reptiles during his childhood.

When they moved back to Switzerland, Buser began helping train sled dogs.

"I didn't have my own, but I was taken by them and trained them in my spare time, I would go to all the little races they had around the central European countries, and this was all while I was going to school," he said.

Then, like everyone in Switzerland, he went into the military, and it is supposed to be a lifetime commitment.

"It was mandatory and they keep a pretty strong, active and trained force there all the time," he said.

After initial training, Buser finished second in his class and was offered all kinds of good jobs, but instead decided to go to Alaska for a year to learn more about the sled dogs.

"Well, the rest they say is history," Buser said.

But there was more history to come for Buser, not the least being four Iditarod championships and counting.

Upon his arrival in Alaska, Buser at first tried a subsistence lifestyle living on the Yukon River.

"I decided I didn't want to grow old by myself in the Bush, so I moved deliberately into town to be around people and go into work," he said.

He moved to Willow and lived with Earl and Natalie Norris, some of the original founders of the Fur Rendezvous sled dog race.

"They were famous Siberian husky breeders and they enabled me to run in my first Iditarod in 1980 and then again in 1981," he said.

In 1983 Buser met his wife, Kathy Chapoton, got out on his own and began raising his own dog team.

"I worked hard and I took a few years off from mushing, you know, and saved some money to raise a dog team," he said.

Then in 1986, he began running the Iditarod again with his own dogs.

Buser met Chapoton when he started working with emotionally disturbed children at Alaska Children's Services. A mutual friend who also worked there introduced them.

After a while, Buser grew tired of the nine-to-five at the Children's Services, so he, Chapoton and the other couple bought a house together in Eagle River.

Buser began doing commercial-fishing jobs, setting nets in Cook Inlet, and that led into crabbing. In the off season, he worked construction.

"Those kinds of jobs enabled me to raise dogs, you know, the typical nine-to-five job doesn't afford you to be able to do too many other things," he said.

They lived 10 miles up in Eagle River valley, and eventually had too many dogs, so in 1987, they moved to Big Lake.

"We started having neighbors and I couldn't productively train out of the kennel, so we needed to find a place with more trail and access, so we've been in the Valley ever since then," he said.

Chapoton has taught school at Midnight Sun Family Learning Center for 10 years and that school has been another of Buser's loves over the years, helping with its growth.

Taking care of so many dogs over the years, Buser says he works with the Big Lake/Susitna Veterinary Hospital and that it has been a "fantastic" help to him over the years.

"Both the original owner, Dr. Leach, and the newer Dr. Baetsle have both been key players in the operation here," Buser said.

Buser and Chapoton's sons, Nikolai, born in 1988 and Rohn, in 1989, are each named after checkpoints on the Iditarod Trail. Buser has been busy helping the boys prepare for the Junior Iditarod, which will take place this weekend. Both boys will be racing in it.

"They've been helping me train and I've been helping them with the logistical stuff," he said.

Buser trains seven days a week and takes trips night and day, "mixing it up quite a bit," he says.

He has an Eskimo nickname given him by the residents of Golovin, but now most villages use the name. When he reaches the villages on the Bering Sea coast, they call him "Ayup," which means "Hurry up, get here."

He is a popular musher and a favorite in any venue. He now does motivational speaking, touring all over the world, and says he has a story to fit just about anywhere.

"I've been in 63-below temperatures and I've been stung so bad by mosquitoes going into Unalakleet, that I have all kinds of history to talk about," he said.

When asked what his favorite place on the trail is, Buser tries not to name names, except to say, "Nikolai and Rohn are two favorite places for obvious reasons, especially now, that the boys have turned out so good you know, they are wonderful kids. I was partial to those places before, but now they are really good spots. I always say that my favorite place is the place that I'm at at the moment, and my favorite dog is the one that I'm petting at the moment."

That must be the reasoning that caused Buser to name his dog kennel "Happy Trails."

Buser has started a sled dog tour company out of the kennel, which runs from April 15 to Oct. 15. Reservations for rides with Buser may be made through his Web site at www.buserdog.com or by calling 892-7899.

About Chapoton, Buser said, "Often people only see my little success, and they don't get to see that she is a very important and integral part of what I do and she doesn't care to get a lot of the limelight and the attention, but truthfully of course, it would be impossible to get where I am at without her.

"People only see the immediate success, but they don't know that I had myself on a dollar-a-day food budget and that I worked 16- to 18-hour days for five years straight," he said. "People overlook those things when they see the nice trucks from Nye and things like that, but I had to work to be able to start into what I did."

Buser will be looking for his fifth Iditarod win

next week.