The Fourth of July, 2026, will mark the 98th running of Seward’s Mount Marathon race. According to the Mount Marathon website, this is the oldest mountain race in North America. The lottery for open spots opened on March 1st and will remain open until the end of the month. This year some new regulations and additions were announce:
- The skip-a-year option, a deferral for runners that could be used once in their event racing lifetime, has been eliminated for 2026. The runners who skipped 2025 will still be honored and received a priority registration invite for 2026. This change expects to create an additional 50 lottery spots available compared to the effect of skip-a-year.
- A new event, “Race from the Base,” will give 7 and 8 year old runners an opportunity to compete after the minimum age for juniors was raised to 9 in 2024. Nine and 10 year old runners will also be able to participate in this event. Registration will only be available on race day.
- A team competition option is open for racers from all divisions of the event that will allow racers in each team to have as many members as they wish with the top five performances counting towards their team score. Team registration will open after the 2026 roster is published after closure at the end of March.
In 2016, Seward historian Doug Capra, wrote a piece for the Anchorage Daily News to review the history of the Mount Marathon event. He explained there that “local legend claims the Mount Marathon Race began as a barroom bet: Could anyone reach the peak of 3,022 feet and return to the streets of Seward in under an hour?” At that time, the peak, even after cable communication connected Seward to the Outside World in 1905, had been used as a lookout for ships entering Seward’s Resurrection Bay. Prior to statehood, Seward was a critical location in the region of Alaska. The Alaska Railroad was completed in 1923 connecting Seward and the larger Gulf of Alaska to Anchorage and the interior, Capra wrote.
Current race director Matias Saari has won the men’s race several times and continues to participate as a racer describes the race in detail:
“It's quite a spectacle, like I said, it's on the fourth (of July) so there's thousands of spectators. The race, basically, it's a pure, pure mountain running race. You start in town, run a half mile to the base of the mountain. You can see the entire event from town with binoculars. Or you can go up and watch on the mountain, but you’ll climb close to 3,000 feet over about a mile of mountain terrain. So, it's exceptionally steep going up and and there's a bit of a different down Trail, which some people can call a controlled fall. There's scree up on the mountain, loose rock that enables you to run fast through the rock. And then, there's a section with the active running creek and obstacles and ledges, and at the bottom is a cliff to negotiate. So there's a fair amount of excitement and even danger. That is part of the whole appeal of the event and its popularity. ”
For interested racers who don’t make it into the lottery system, there is a live auction for bids at the safety meeting in the Seward High School gym the evening before the race.
“On July 3, we auction off about 14 spots in the gymnasium with a professional auctioneer. And that's quite a popular event to watch as well. And the prices can go anywhere from $1,000 to $4,000 just to get in and suffer going up and down Mount Marathon. There’s a lot of pride for the town of Seward to host such a unique event,” Saari said.
The Mount Marathon website (mountmarathon.com) provides several more trivia details about the history of the race. The race website has more details on the race including directions on how to apply for the 2026 lottery.
Mastias concludes with these details, “I would say Alaska is one of a kind, or mountain marathon is one of a kind. I wouldn't say there's anything quite like it. I mean, there's other mountain running races, but
there's nothing with the spectators that the Marathon has. There's nothing with the
popularity, the demand to get in, which is, you know, created a lot of challenges for us, and is part of the reason for some of our little changes. So yeah, there are other mountain races, but there's nothing that really compares, in my opinion, to Mount Marathon….”
Reporting from Homer, this is Emilie Springer.
