The cold has been wearing on Kelly Maixner and his dogs, but that’s not stopping him from shooting even higher. “I’d like to get up a little further. I think I can probably get up to the top 15.”
Switching his sled for the last chunk of the race, Maixner says this one is smaller and there’s no seat. He plans on running a lot on the trip to Nome. “All those guys at the edge of the top 10, I was with about 40 miles ago,” he laughed. “But things change quickly.”
Maixner says his team is quite fast—and they’re mostly Iditarod vets. Some of his younger and less experienced dogs get nervous out on the coast, but they trust the leader. “If there’s a leader, they’re ready to go. They trust in the person leading the pack as well as trusting in me, I guess,” said Maixner in Unalakleet.
“Most of the leaders have been there and know there’s an end in sight,” he said, even if traversing an unpredictable coast is the only way to get there.
