Young guns picking up the Iron Dog mantle

Under-30 racers populate a talented Iron Dog roster

Bubba McDaniel and Wilson Hoogendorn of Nome are entering their first Pro Class race this year. Veteran racers, like Team 7’s Tyler Aklestad and Nick Ousted, have been a big help with their preparation, they said. Photo: Wilson Hoogendorn

 When Bubba McDaniel was a kid growing up in Nome, every February he would rush down to the Nome garage to watch as Iron Dog racers would hurriedly work on their snowmachines in the World’s Longest, Toughest Snowmobile Race. The smell of motor oil, the clank of metal-on-metal, the constant hum of multiple conversations at once gave him a thrill that settled in his bones.

“Year after year after year when I was kid, I’d watch them work, and I’d go to the banquet and get all their signatures,” said McDaniel, now aged 26. “There’d be guys like Todd Palin, Scott Davis, Dusty VanMeter, Andy George – all those top guys I just watched them growing up.”

Fast forward to the 2024 race, and McDaniel was sitting in the Nome Subway Sandwich shop.

“I was just eating, when they came through and I watched Haakon Wold coming through with his partner,” he said. “I called Wilson and said, ‘We gotta do the Iron Dog someday,’ and he agreed we should.”

A week or two later, Wilson (last name Hoogendorn, and McDaniel’s childhood best friend) entered and won the Nome-Golovin race. Wilson’s prize? Free entry into the Iron Dog Race.

“I think the stars aligned,” McDaniel said. “Because now we had a way to do the race.”

Hoogendorn, 25, said the low-snow year – both in Southcentral Alaska and in Nome, where he and Bubba live – has proven to be a challenge for training, but as a rookie team, he just wants to have a clean race.

“It sounds like the first day is a big hurdle to jump over – the (Farewell) Burn and all the jitters and the start – getting past that is objective number one,” he said. “After that, it is to stick with the upper half of the pack. I think we are just going to try to keep in touch through the radios and try and not to stop, even if we have to slow down.”

Team 4, Hoogendorn and McDaniel, are one of nine all-rookie teams battling it out with a star-studded cast of past champions in this year’s Iron Dog Race. They join a field of nine past champions and seven other rookies racing with veteran partners. And while these young guns of the 2020s are just getting started, they are not new to riding.

Team 9’s Troy Conlon and Evan Barber celebrate their strong finish in the 2024 Iron Dog race. Barber is one of the youngest racers in the Pro Class circuit. Photo: Tyler Bryan

 Take Evan Barber for instance. At just 20 years old, he has already competed in three Iron Dog Pro Class races, first at the age of 16 with his father, finishing a solid eighth place. At the time, he was the youngest to ever race the Pro Class. Since then, Barber has inched his way up, with a seventh-place finish in 2023 with Kelly Sommer and a fourth-place finish with Troy Conlon in 2024. He and Conlon are back again this year as Team 9.  

 “I grew up hearing stories about Iron Dog, and all the dos and don’ts,” said Barber, whose father, Shane Barber, and grandfather Mike Spain were longtime top racers in the field. His brother Cody took home the family’s first victory in 2024 with brother-in-law Brett Lapham. This year, Evan is the only Barber in a race that often featured up to three of them.

 “I have some big shoes to fill,” he said. “I feel like growing up with this, I can ride as good as any of them, but that’s not the side that can win races. You also have to know how to read GPS good, have a strong mechanical side, and learn to pace yourself. That’s why it definitely pays to have someone with experience like Troy (with seven finishes under his belt). I still have a lot to learn.”

Team 29 Hayden Reid and Reggie Davis come upon, and moved, a blowdown on the trail while training Jan. 12, 2025. The two — ages 23 and 20 respectively — are racing the Pro Class for the first time this year. Photo: Hayden Reid

 Reggie Davis and Hayden Reid are Team 29, rookies from Big Lake and Wasilla who have been riding all their lives. After racing the Skwentna 200 in 2024, they turned heads after holding their own with racers like Team 7’s Tyler Aklestad and Nick Olstad. They had the fastest split time between Deshka Landing and Skwentna and were going strong until they busted a machine and ultimately finished third in the Pro Class division.

 “When I went to my first Iron Dog when I was like 8 years old, I decided, ‘I’m highly interested in snowmachining,’” said Davis, 20. “In 2019, I started ice racing, and then I bought my first brand-new snowmachine at 15, and ever since then, I’ve entered little sprint races here and there. Now we’re into cross country.”

 Reid, too, tasted his first victory in the 2021 Big Lake 500K – 60 laps totaling about 300 miles – and hasn’t looked back since.

 “After I won the Big Lake 500, Robbie Schachle invited us to race Mayor’s Cup, and we did and then I started doing cross country after that,” said Reid, 24. Last year, Reid won the Mayor’s Cup semipro division, leaving him with one more challenge: cross-country racing. This year, he will be competing in the 2025 International 500 Snowmobile Endurance Race (SOO I-500) in late January, a weeklong race in Michigan, before hoofing it back to Alaska in time for the Iron Dog start.

 “The Iron Dog for me is more of a bucket list item, not so much a career,” Reid said. “I have no experience with any racing other than ice racing, Skwentna and Mayor’s Cup. Honestly, the furthest I’ve been is to Hell’s Gate. But we are Alaskans. At the end of the day, any condition that comes up out there, as long as it’s not life threatening, we should be able to handle.”

Team 41’s Tyler Reese and Haakon Wold have a combined age of 39 in this year’s Iron Dog race, the same age or younger as more than a third of the Iron Dog racing field. Photo: Tom Stokes

 Team 41 Haakon Wold and Tyler Reese may be young, but they are far from rookies. In fact, the pair, at just ages 18 and 19 in 2024, finished ninth in a field of finishers ahead of them whose ages were higher than Wold’s and Reese’s combined. It was Wold’s second race, and Tyler’s first.

 “It was last minute,” Wold said. “Tyler’s been wanting to do Iron Dog since he was little. And I didn’t have a partner at the time. When I asked, he’s like, ‘Yeah, I’m down.’  My first ride with him last year was Dec. 10; we went up to Skwentna and back, and the next day we decided to race Iron Dog. We were lucky enough for Iron Dog to let us join late. “

 Todd Palin remembers those days of spontaneous decisions well. As this year’s oldest entrant in the race, he is celebrating a milestone: 30 races in his 60 years on this earth. Palin remains one of the winningest racers of the Iron Dog, taking the top spot just three years into his racing career with a 1995 win with partner Dwayne Drake. He went on to win three more Iron Dogs in 2000 and 2002 with Iron Dog Hall of Famer Dusty Van Meter and a forth championship in 2027 with Scott Davis (also a Hall of Famer).

 “My buddy (Frank Woods) said, ‘Let’s do Iron Dog,’ and I said, ‘OK, sounds good,’ but we didn’t know what we were getting into,” said Palin of his first race in 1993. “We took off from Klondike Inn and just worked our butts off. That was back when you wore a beaver hat, and on a good day you had goggles on.”

 Palin said the early days of racing were when his learning curve was the steepest. Growing up in Dillingham and Glennallen, he was used to hard work – his family commercial fishes, he played competitive sports like hockey and basketball – and living in remote areas instilled a sort of self-reliance that served him well as a racer.

 “Starting Iron Dog, you’re kind of a deer in the headlights watching the guys who know how to do it,” he said. “John Faeo, Scott Davis and Danny Zipay – up until 1995 – they were always the ones at the top. And you aspired to be there.”  

 It was a different race back then, too, Palin said. The race took off, and racers depended on laminated maps of the course and were told the general locations of the fuel drums along the way. But that doesn’t mean today’s newcomers have it any easier, he added. No matter the advancements of today’s Iron Dog, it’s still a mental challenge at the end of the day.

 “In any motorsport racing, sometimes the fastest guys don’t always win,” he said. “In the team race, your team’s got to be efficient and productive. The guys in their 40s are in their prime, racing-wise, because they’ve had time to perfect this.”

 But, he said, his advice to the young guns: “Don’t overthink it. They are Alaska kids. They know what they need to do. Don’t think you need all the gadgets. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing for a lot of people so don’t get all wrapped up in spending a bunch of money. Your life is in your partner’s hands. Your partner’s life is in your hands. That’s all that matters.”

OTHER YOUNG GUNS TO WATCH:

Team 3: Skyler Wells (age 23) with Kenny Kleewein

Team 18: Austin Carroll (age 18) with Kris Kaltenbacher

Team 25: Trevor Helwig (age 28) and Kenny Lee (age 27)