Bend man, 70, killed in collision of two snowmobiles on Alaska’s Denali Highway

Pharmaceutical consultant was veterinary pathologist, volunteered at Iditarod sled-dog race

ANCHORAGE, Alaska. (KTVZ) – A collision of two snowmobiles among a group riding on Alaska’s Denali Highway has killed a Bend man, Alaska State Troopers said.

The crash was reported Friday afternoon, after a man riding a snowmobile struck the back of another operated by Glenn Cantor, 70, sending both off the trail, and Cantor’s snowmobile landed on top of him, the State Troopers’ dispatch said.

State Troopers received an SOS alert from a satellite communications device and responded to the area, along with wildlife troopers. Members of the snowmobile group attempted life-saving measures, but Cantor died at the scene. No other injuries were reported.

According to independent journalist Craig Medred, it’s believed to be the first such fatality on the Denali Highway, an unmaintained state highway along the south side of the Alaska Range, although earlier this winter, there were two separate snowmobile-dog team collisions that left five dogs dead and others seriously injured.

Cantor had in recent years been an independent consultant for the pharmaceutical industry and for nonprofit organizations.

“My goal is to help discover and develop new drugs for unmet medical needs,” Cantor wrote on his LinkedIn profile page, having previously worked for Bristol-Meyers Squibb, with a focus on treatment of cancer patients.

Cantor was a veterinary pathologist by training and for years served as a volunteer on the famous Iditarod sled dog race, where he “was well-known to many familiar with the event or living in villages along the 1,000-mile route between Anchorage and Nome," Medred wrote.

In fact, Medred reported it was Cantor's work as a pathologist that led to the role as a pharmaceutical consultant whose job was to find links between the works of scientists “deep down their rabbit holes of individual study.”

He said Cantor was an experienced snowmobile (many Alaskans call them snowmachines) rider and also was an amateur photographer whose Iditarod images appeared in a variety of publications. Cantor was a professor for several years at Washington State University, where he had earned his PhD in veterinary science.