Red Lantern

From Facebook:

  The Red Lantern (the award for the last musher who successfully crosses under the burled arch) goes to Cindy Abbott, who finished the Last Great Race in 13 days, 11 hours, 19 minutes and 51 seconds.

  This was Abbott’s third attempt at finishing the Iditarod. By completing the race, she becomes the first female to summit Mount Everest and finish the Iditarod.

  “Everest took two months living on a mountain, and this took two weeks…or a little short of it,” said Abbott as she passed the finish line. ”But, for me, this was harder, by far.”Abbott is also on a quest to raise awareness about rare diseases. She suffers from Wegener’s granulomatosis,

which she says went undiagnosed for 14 years. She carried a “World Rare Disease Day 2010″ banner with her throughout the race.

That banner happens to be the same one she took with her when she climbed Mount Everest back in 2010. Moments after finishing the race, she used a sharpie to add in the year 2015 as a reminder of her success on the trail. She says this won’t be her last adventure, adding that the banner’s next stop might be out of this world.

“Really what I’d like to do is take one of those manned space shuttles from Spacex and take that banner up to the moon,” she said. “They have manned space vehicles there getting ready to go to Mars. I don’t care about going to Mars, but I would like to go to the moon and take my banner there.” 

Photo of Cindy Abbott from her FB page where she said: “As the last musher in, I had the honor of extinguishing the Widows' Lantern and receiving the Wells Fargo Red Lantern Award. 

                                                What an incredible experience!”