ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The 2012 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race has officially ended after two weeks with musher Jan Steves taking the Red Lantern award on Monday morning.
The 55-year-old rookie musher from Edmonds, WA crossed the Burled Arch on Front Street in Nome at 2:57 a.m. March 19.
Steves extinguished the flame in the Widow’s Lamp, which signifies that all mushers and their teams were safely off the Iditarod trail.
She was the 53rd musher to complete the nearly 1,000 mile journey from Anchorage, and then restart in Willow, and finishing in Nome in 14 days, 11 hours, 57 minutes and 11 seconds.
Veteran Iditarod musher Bob Chlupach crossed the finished line two minutes before Steves, but according to GPS tracking Chlupach and Steves kept a similar pace traveling side-to-side for much of the race after the restart in Willow.
