Jamaican having hoot on the Iditarod Trail

CRIPPLE -- The man on the runners behind the Jamaican team in this year's Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race stands out wherever he goes, and it's not simply because he's the only black man in the competition.

The fact is you don't even need to see Hootin' Newton Marshall to know that he is in a checkpoint -- just follow the laughter. In a race that happens as much in the dark of night as in the light of day, his bubbling, fun-loving, prank-playing personality stands out even more than his color.

When someone told him he'd frostbit his nose and cheeks coming into Nikolai earlier in the race, his first question was, "What color is it?''

"Black,'' someone said.

Newton said he knew that much. "I'm a black mon, '' he joked.

Everyone laughed, and then someone explained that the black of the frostbite was blacker than the rest of him. Everyone laughed some more at that, most especially Hootin' Newton. He moves in a bubble of laughter.

In McGrath, he entertained by using his iPod to share a video of his first experience shooting a shotgun. The video is hilarious. Hootin' Newton aims, fires and gets knocked on his butt by the recoil. Everyone laughed when they watched it. Hootin' Newton laughed along with them.

His personality is such that even that which might sound like whining from others gets everyone laughing. Most of the people in the race try to put the toughman (or toughwoman) face on the 40-below, night-time cold that's stalking this Iditarod. Not Newton.

"I am cold every night,'' he said, laughing in the Cripple checkpoint Saturday. "I feel it coming in my pockets, all my zippers. It was like the cold was unzipping my clothes."

Still, he presses on. It is a job, he said: "I got sponsored. The other (musher) in Jamaica didn't like it too much. So I said I would do it. I wasn't very smart.

"(Rainy Pass) was so scary I thought I was going to die. There was zero visibility. It was dark. You could not see anything. I fell in waist-deep snow. Then my dogs got in a tangle."

He has a female in heat that's always advertising for company. That's led to lots of tangles. "I get them going again after I catch my breath (in the pass),'' Marshall said. "Then this keeps happening about 15 times."

Fear and perseverance, not skill, finally got him through the gap in the Alaska Range, the 27-year-old said. "I consider I've been lucky," he said. "I'm looking forward to getting my finisher's belt buckle. I close my eyes and click my heals and say, 'There's no place like Nome."

Then he rushed off to block the door to the checkpoint to make another musher think it was frozen shut. She banged her shoulder against it a couple times trying to get it open. Then Hootin' Newton swung it wide and laughed. She did, too.

It's hard not to when your hangin' with the funnest, funniest musher on the trail.

Craig Medred's Iditarod coverage for Alaska Dispatch focuses on the "back of the pack" mushers trying to reach Nome. His coverage will document the real life struggles of ordinary people when they cash in everything to chase their dream of becoming an Iditarod dog musher. The stories are a prelude to the forthcoming book, "Graveyard of Dreams: Dashed Hopes and Shattered Aspirations along Alaska's Iditarod Trail." Click to pre-order a copy.