Gabe Dunham, 35, was born in Fairbanks and grew up in Valdez. She moved to Oregon in 2011 where she received her BS degree in Natural Resource Conservation and Fish and Wildlife Management. She had begun mushing in Valdez in 2000, and after a steep learning curve, she moved to Willow in 2002 where she met Linwood and Kathy Fiedler. She says she owes a lot of her mushing success to their mentorship over the years. She now has a kennel of 30 Alaskan Huskies in Darby, Montana, where she has owned and operated a sled dog tour outfit since 2018. She always wanted to run the Iditarod but it wasn’t until 2018 that she really thought she could do it. In planning for the 2020 Iditarod, she has run numerous mid distance races. She loves anything that gets her outside, including camping, backpacking, rafting, hunting and fishing.