This horrible trek is the scene of the ultimate endurance test called the Sled Dog Race, where 12 huskies pull a sled and its driver thru the most exhausting, inhuman conditions one can fathom. One frequent champion was girl.

The secret, she would tell you, was her very own mind-set and the coaching of those dogs, which gave new meaning to the word “serious.” Her 150-dog dog house was a thing to behold.

straight after each puppy’s birth, although it was still blind, she held it in her hands and breathed her breath into its nose. She personally nursed them to health when they were wounded. She was infinitely patient with them, talked to them, thought in them, even sang to them ( old folks songs by Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, and some Irish lullabies ).

They saved her life on the trail several times. Back in 1979, she led her dog team to the 20,320-foot peak of Mount McKinley. One journalist described her as having “a stiff backbone.

.an unrelenting mind-set,” which was what she wanted to endure moose attacks, snowstorms so dreadful that one time for 5 hours she could not see the lead dog, and a unexpected plunge into icy water ( Granite and Maddie, the mushers, pulled her out ). To survive it calls for help from above and toughness from inside. If she was ready to give that sort of effort to win a race that’s awesome in the eyes of the Earth, appears to me we deserve to be capable of conquering the marathon from earth to heaven.