The Denali Highway at its winter best/Denali Snowcat Services

Collision kills Denali snowmachine rider

Following two separate, snowmachine-dog team collisions that left five dogs dead and others seriously injured along Alaska’s Denali Highway this winter, the unmaintained state highway along the south side of the Alaska Range in the center has now recorded its first human fatality involving the collision of two snowmachines.

Alaska State Troopers on Saturday reported that a Friday afternoon collision there resulted in the death of 70-year-old Glenn Cantor – a Bend, Ore., scientist deeply involved in cancer research.

A veterinary pathologist by training, he for years served as Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race volunteer and was well-known to many familiar with the event or living in villages along the 1,000-mile route between Anchorage and Nome.

According to a trooper dispatch,  “a snowmachine that was being operated by an adult male” slammed into the back of Cantor’s sled and knocked both machines off the snow-covered road.

“Cantor’s snowmachine landed on top of him,” the dispatch said. “Despite life-saving efforts by other members of the group Cantor was declared deceased.”

He is believed the first ever to die in a snowmachine collision on the Denali, which has in recent years become an increasingly popular place to ride.

Skilled professional

A consultant for the pharmaceutical industry in his later years, Cantor was a regular visitor to Alaska.

He has a brother who lives in Chugiak, a suburb just north of Anchorage and his association with the Iditarod goes way back. He first began working with Alaska “Last Great Race” while a  Washington State University vet in the early 1990s.

“This is what Glenn Cantor is looking forward to as he starts his vacation today,” the Spokesman-Review newspaper reported in 1996, “sleeping on the floor of a village community center, maybe even in a tent, in the Alaska outback.

“Wearing four sets of long underwear beneath his quilted pants.

“Taking off his inch-thick mittens to examine hundreds of dogs with his bare hands.

“Did we mention the temperature can reach 60 degrees below zero?”

Cantor’s work as a veterinary pathologist who examined thousands of dead animals eventually led him into a new profession as a pharmaceutical consultant whose job was to find connections between the works of scientists deep down their rabbit holes of individual study.

His being able to discover links between elements of various studies that would have otherwise gone unnoticed was credited with helping to drive breakthroughs in research into cancer, multiple sclerosis and dementia.

Alaska love

An amateur photographer, Cantor also captured a lot of images of the Iditarod that appeared in a wide variety of publications over the years. The last post on his Facebook page was of the sun setting in Alaska on the day before his death.

“I love the subtle salmon color of the sky at sunset in Alaska,” he wrote above it.

On Feb. 10, he’d previously noted that he and companion Inge Eriks were “on our way to Alaska for a snowmobiling (snowmachining, as it is called in Alaska) trip” to Petersville, a community north of the climbing hotspot of Talkeetna, the jumping off point for Mount Denali, before a ride along the Denali highway to the north of that community.

An experienced snowmachine rider, he was joining friends in the 49th state for the outing. One of the riders with his group said the collision came after Cantor and others stopped their machines on the trail. When they went to take off again there “was a rapid unintended acceleration,” possibly due to a stuck throttle, on one of the machines.

The machine took off and slammed into one of the skis on Cantor’s still stationary machine, knocking it off the trail and rolling it downhill into alders and deep, sugary snow with Cantor trapped beneath. It was reported to have taken five minutes or more to dig him out, and though CPR was performed until a trooper arrived on the scene, Cantor could not be revived.

With questions inevitably swirling about the possibility of alcohol consumption, a factor in many Alaska snowmachine crashes, he added that “alcohol was definitely not a factor here.”

And though a sudden acceleration was involved, that is a different kind of speed issue from the problems with speeding blamed in the earlier deaths of sled dogs. Troopers have linked all the sled-dog deaths on snowmachine operators driving too fast.

Dog deaths

The collisions between snowmachines and sled dogs on the Denali resulted in charges being filed against two men.

After a snowmachine driven by Healy resident Austin Gibbs ran into a team of dogs being driven by a handler for five-time Iditarod champ Dallas Seavey in November and killed two of the animals, troopers cited the 28-year-old man for negligent driving. 

State court records reflect that he has since offered a plea of “no contest” to the citation and paid a fine of $320.

A month after Gibbs collided with Seavey’s dogs, a snowmachine driven by 48-year-old Erik Johnson, a resident of Roseau, Minn. and a professional driver for Rousea-based Polaris Industries, smashed into a team of dogs belonging to well-known Iditarod veteran Jim Lanier that were on a training run under the command of musher Mike Parker.

Three dogs died in that collision, and earlier this month it was revealed state prosecutors had filed reckless driving charges against Johnson in connection with what Polaris has  described to Minnesota media as a “tragic accident.”

Parker has said a trio of machines came “hauling ass” down the unmaintained and snow-covered Denali, appeared to pay little attention to his bright headlight swinging back and forth over his team of dogs to alert them of his presence on the trail, and then Johnson smashed into the team.

Johnson has not commented on the collision. He is now scheduled for arraignment before a magistrate at the Nenana Courthouse in Central Alaska on March 4.

The dog deaths raised questions about safety on the unmaintained road that is closed to cars and trucks in the winter and turned into a groomed trail shared by snowmachines and dog teams.

Troopers have said speed limits don’t apply there in the winter because the road is unmaintained, and some contend snowmachines, some of which can hit speeds of over 100 mph, sometimes travel way too fast on the road.

“To give you a better idea of some popular snowmobile speeds, these are some ratings for standard models” the J.D. Power website says. “The Ski-Doo MXZ X 850 has a recorded top speed of 128 miles per hour, while the Polaris Switchback Pro-S 800 caps out at 105 mph, and the Arctic Cat ZR 6000 EL Tigre is a bit slower at 88 mph. The Polaris Assault 800 tops off at 112 mph, and Ski-Doo 850 has a top speed of 118 mph.”

Such speeds are exhilarating but require drivers both attentive and skilled if safety is to be maintained.

CORRECTION: This is a corrected version of the original story. It was updated to provide new and more accurate details on how the collision between the two snowmachines happened.