Newton Marshall says he likes it in Alaska, and that’s a very good thing: the rookie Iditarod musher has traveled all the way from Jamaica to participate in The Last Great Race.
So far he’s braved frostbite and strong winds at Rainy Pass, and Alaska’s sub-zero temperatures are a substantial shift from the warmth of his home country. Marshall says he’s “just pretending… that I like 30 below,” but he stayed upbeat while talking with our reporter Laureli at the Nikolai checkpoint:
This isn’t Marshall’s first time experiencing the climate of Alaska – or dog mushing. In 2009, he became the first Jamaican to finish the Yukon Quest, a sled-dog race almost as long as the Iditarod (running from Fairbanks, Alaska to Whitehorse, Yukon).
At the time of writing (3:17pm on Wednesday), Newton Marshall was in 52nd position. He left Nikolai at 9:50am Wednesday morning with 14 dogs.
