Nomeites compete in 2026 Iron Dog

This Saturday, February 14, 30 teams will leave Big Lake for the 42nd running of the Iron Dog snowmachine race.
Three of those teams have ties to Nome. Veteran racer and two-time winner Mike Morgan grew up in Nome and now lives in Southcentral Alaska.
Nomeite Steffen Booth is taking his second pass at the race after becoming the youngest-ever entry at age 16 in 2022 when he raced with his father Evan Booth.
Father-son duo Kevin McDaniel-Farley and Chugie Farley are hitting the trail together for Kevin’s first attempt at the pro class.
The pro class starts in Big Lake before heading north to loop to Kotzebue before heading south to the halfway point in Nome. The second half of the race is an eastward push across the interior to a finish in Fairbanks. Since 2020, the race has finished in Big Lake.
Iron Dog Executive Director Rick Paquette said that the race board made the decision to change the finish to Fairbanks to switch things up. “Everybody loves doing the course,” he said. “At the end of the day, it just expands our reach across Alaska.”
The eight riders in Ambassador Team and eight teams in the Expedition Class start on Thursday, Feb. 12.  In the expedition class, teams can choose if they want to finish in Kotzebue or Nome.
The pro class racers are expected to arrive in Kotzebue on Monday, Feb. 16, and they will be on their way to Tuesday morning. They are expected to arrive on Tuesday afternoon with wrench time allowed between 1 and 10 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 18,  is Wrench Day at the Public Works garage and the Nome Halfway banquet will be held at the Mini Convention Center starting at 5 p.m.
Paquette said that the field this year has a lot of depth. “We have young guys, a bunch of young guns out there. We also have legends like Todd Palin, multiple former champions in it,” he said. “It’s a really, really diverse field.”
Pro class racers are expected to finish on Saturday, Feb. 21 afternoon in front of Pike’s Waterfront Lodge on the Chena River ice.

Mike Morgan
Mike Morgan grew up in Nome. Snowmachines are in his blood – his great grandfather started the Polaris dealership in Nome in the 1950s. His dad and all of his uncles raced, so it was only natural for Morgan to follow in their footsteps.
“All I wanted to do when I was younger was race,” he said. Once he started, he didn’t want stop.
“I mean, we’re racers, man. We love to compete,” he said. “And when you get a taste of winning, and you get a taste of success, like any sport makes you hungry, makes you want to go after more.”
Morgan has raced in an Iron Dog every year since 2009 – with the exception of one year - and has won twice, in 2018 and in 2019. Since then, Morgan switched has race partners from Chris Olds to Bradley Kishbaugh, and the race switched finish points from Fairbanks to Big Lake. This year, the finish is back in Fairbanks and Morgan feels like he and Kishbaugh have a good shot.
“Bradley and I are a very fast team. We’re one of the fastest teams on paper,” he said. “We were in contention to win our first race together in ‘24.”
In 2024, a mechanical issue outside of Kaltag caused holdups and the team finished in third. Last year, they ran outside of gas and had to take a 45-minute fueling penalty, and then snapped a drive shaft outside of Nome. They ended up finishing in fourth place. This year, he feels like he and Kishbaugh are ready to make a comeback.
“We’re pretty confident that our sleds are going to hold up to whatever we throw at them.” Morgan said. They are racing on a Polaris Cross Country 600 sleds.  
Morgan and Kishbaugh have gone on training runs as far out as Puntilla Lake. He hasn’t ridden the coast at all this year, but he says he’s not worried. They haven’t done a long run this year, either.
He’s been talking to locals and checking on the weather. “I’ve been keeping in touch with some pilots and kind of getting some information on the ice up there, because we can essentially go anywhere we want on the sea ice to make time or take a shortcut or whatever,” he said.
While the snow coverage is good this year, he said the warm weather switches things up. “There’s going to be some water. The South Fork going to Rohn is probably going to have some overflow on it,” he said.
Morgan’s advice for any young racers that want to cut their teeth on the Iron Dog? Find a teammate and do it. “You got to get the experience. Experience is your best teacher,” he said. “To get into it, just get some machines, sign up. You don’t have to get all the latest and greatest stuff.”

Steffen Booth
Steffen Booth is one of those young racers. Booth became the youngest person to race the Iron Dog in 2022, when he entered the race at 16 with his father. They finished in 11th place. Booth unseated the previous youngest racer, Evan Barber, who entered at 16 in 2021.
There’s no bad blood there. Barber is Booth’s teammate this year, and the pair have known each other since they were kids. Racing together was a natural choice, Booth said. He hasn’t raced the Iron Dog since 2022, but this will be Barber’s fifth time. “I’m not feeling the nerves yet,” Steffen Booth said. “I mean, I got Evan with me. He’s raced it.”
Booth also comes from a family of racers. His father Evan Booth won the Iron Dog twice in the 1990’s. He said he doesn’t let the family legacy pressure bother him too much. “One of my things that my dad told me for advice, he told me that not to set any expectations for myself and Evan [Barber] for this year,” he said. “It’s our learning year. There’s a lot to learn individually and together as a team.”
Booth said he’s not entirely sure why he wants to race the Iron Dog. “It’s fun. I can’t really compare it to like smaller races and sprint races around Alaska,” he said. “It is an entirely different race. It’s pretty tough.”
Evan Barber is a veteran of the race, with four Iron Dogs under his belt at 21-years-old. To him, the Iron Dog is about the hard experiences out on the trail. “It’s when you’re not having fun, and then you look back and you just want to do it again,” he said. “I didn’t race in ‘22 and it ate me alive watching everyone else go out there.”
Booth said the community surrounding the Iron Dog plays into his race mentality. “That’s one of my favorite parts, too, all the communities, especially around Kotzebue, they are really into the racing scene,” he said. “Just going through all that and seeing everybody and how into it they are. It’s really awesome.”
Booth said that the first step to racing the Iron Dog is finding a well-paying job. The second step is surrounding yourself with the racing community. “And, it’s something that you have to strive for,” he added. “It’s nothing easy at all.”
The team is racing on Polaris Cross Country 600s.

Kevin McDaniel-Farley and Chugie Farley
Eighteen-year-old Kevin McDaniel-Farley of Nome is new to the pro class after having completed the expedition class in 2024 with his dad Chugie Farley and his uncle Harvey Farley. This year, the father-son duo are heading into the pro class race.
The team is racing on Lynx Rave RE 600s, which they said Johnny Bahnke helped them set up.
When McDaniel-Farley came to live with Chugie and his wife Jessica in Nome, he started getting interested in the snow machine races. Snowmachining was one of the things he and Chugie bonded over.
“Then I heard about Iron Dog, and I thought it was pretty cool, so I asked if I could do that,” he said. He, his father and uncle raced the expedition class to test the waters. McDaniel-Farley and Chugie intended to race the pro class race last year, but after McDaniel-Farley got injured, they had to wait a year.
McDaniel-Farley said he’s excited for the race, but a little nervous. He feels better, heading out on the trail with his dad. “It’s pretty exciting to see new places I haven’t been that he’s been,” he said.
The two men had a tougher start to the season due to low snowpack. “We got our first blizzard, and then that was it,” said Chugie. “The next two months was just nothing, wind-blown, rock-hard tundra out there.”
As a result, they’ve only put about 1,000 miles in this season. Still, Chugie said that this season is about getting McDaniel-Farley prepared for future Iron Dogs. “I’m doing a lot of this for him, to get him ready and go to his next partner,” he said.
Chugie is imparting knowledge gained from experience onto Kevin. “I’m still learning,” said McDaniel-Farley.
Chugie said he’d like for their team to place well, but worrying about placing isn’t the way to run the race. “You just run your own race, and you don’t get into somebody else’s race and try to ride,” he said.
Another thing Chugie wants to teach McDaniel-Farley is the community aspect that comes with racing. “The people are just amazing,” Chugie said. “They wait up at night for you to come in, and just a whole crowd of people come down to talk to you.”
For his part, McDaniel-Farley is excited to get out there and run the race. “I love being outdoors,” he said. “Any chance I can go out and do something, I will, no matter what it is.”

Correction: This article has been updated to fix a mistake in the age of Kevin McDaniel-Farley. He is 18-years-old, not 20, as previously reported.