RUBY — When traveling 1,000 miles to Nome in the Iditarod, veteran musher Ken Anderson said Friday that a couple of regular-size water bottles are never enough.
"I go through pretty much a whole gallon of water on each run if it's eight hours or so," he said at the checkpoint here. So he copied the idea of a giant, insulated water bottle from four-time Iditarod champion Jeff King, he said.
Anderson, of Fairbanks, took a large thermos and created a shell for it of reflective insulation with duct tape. It stands about 18 inches tall. With the large tube he inserted in the lid for a straw, it measures closer to 3 feet.
Iditarod musher Karin Hendrickson also sported similar-styled glassware at the Takotna checkpoint Tuesday. Instead of silver-and-orange duct tape like Anderson's container, Hendrickson's cup was covered in cheetah print. She referred to it as her "giant, insulated sippy cup."