A Torch Has Been Extinguished
From the Anchorage Daily News we learn that Butcher loses cancer fight:
Far from her Alaska home and the dogs she loved so much, four-time Iditarod champion Susan Butcher died Saturday in a Seattle hospital.
She was 51 years old and the mother of two young daughters. She had been waging a battle against leukemia for a year and a half, but sometimes not even the toughest warriors can win.
On 17 of her 51 years, a third of her life, Susan Butcher was on the Iditarod Trail challenging the Alaskan wilderness and weather on the 1,100+ mile length. She also drove a dog team to the top of Mount McKinley.
She was more than a candle in the darkness – she was a torch. You don’t ride in a dog sled; you spend most of your time running. All you need to win is to be a world-class dog breeder and trainer, a marathon runner, an arctic survival specialist, and handy enough to fix a busted sled in the middle of a wilderness.
