Heads in the clouds: Runners climb their way to victory on Seward’s Mount Marathon

Approximately two hours from the Independence Day festivities of Anchorage, a mass of visitors packed Seward’s Fourth Avenue and Jefferson Street. The coastal city on the coast of the Kenai Peninsula wasn’t just hosting a Fourth of July parade, it was also welcoming hundreds of athletes to one of North America’s oldest mountain races.  

The tradition officially began in 1915, during the state’s still-fresh railroad boom. Since then, 96 races have been held on the stretch from First National Bank to the top of Mount Marathon’s 2,974 foot summit, according to the city’s website.

Runners of various backgrounds come from across the nation to compete. Alaskans, however, still claim a vast majority of the race’s maximum 1,000 participants according to the official roster. 

There are several races to register in — with a “junior” portion welcoming up to 150 boys and 150 girls, a men’s portion welcoming up to 350 adult runners and a women’s portion welcoming another 350. 

The latter two portions rotate on the schedule every year, and runners are ideally given enough time to prevent overlapping. Each group is broken up into three distinct waves spaced three minutes apart. 

Their journey takes them over three miles starting at Seward’s First National Bank downtown, uphill through Fourth Avenue, across Jefferson Street – to the mountain trail’s base for a near half-mile stretch – then scaling the mountain’s up-to-60-degree slope towards a touchstone at the top before heading back. 

The race downhill is brisk, and despite the whole route taking more than two hours for some racers, the last half has taken runners as little as ten minutes according to the Seward Chamber of Commerce. 

Mount Marathon’s ambitious scope is part of what draws runners to the peninsula every year, with some competing there for over a decade. 

Mount Marathon first-timer Fabio Rozo of Farmington, Minnesota spoke with The Northern Light while standing across the street from the starting line.

“[The race] is very hard, and I just put it on my bucket list, right? To close it out.” 

With him was 12-time competitor John Clark of Palmer, who said “all of [Clark’s] old friends are here,” and that he “can’t think of a better day to spend on the mountain.” 

The two men’s marathon runners were also looking forward to their complimentary beer at Seward’s Yukon Bar. 

Christy Gentemann of Juneau — who entered in the women’s portion — brushed past crowds in front of the Petro Plaza building on her way to the starting line. 

Similarly to Clark and Rozo, Gentemann shared that the prospect of such a challenging run excited and compelled her to enter the race’s lottery. Another first-time participant, she said “the elevation, the burn [and] the experience,” made her “excited to go out and have a good day on the mountain.” 

All the runners who spoke to The Northern Light said they were well aware of the risks inherent to scaling a steep and sometimes slippery slope. 

The high-profile disappearance of 66-year-old competitor Michael LeMaitre in 2012 led to a search that did not end in his retrieval, according to Anchorage Daily News. This incident led to lasting changes to the city and race organizers’ emergency preparedness surrounding the race. 

Even on the low end of incidents, runners returned this year visibly exhausted, in need of water, covered in mud, and with large cuts running along their legs and arms. 

Gentemann said she’d seen “videos of people coming down and taking some falls,” which she described as “a little nerve-wracking.” Gentemann was still determined to run because of the success of her practice runs and previous experiences with ridge races near Juneau. 

Clark said “lots of scrapes and bruises” were a fixture of the race, but it was a reality that he and Rozo were prepared for. 

For emergency teams in Seward, emergency response is crucial when holding the race. A group of auxiliary Seward Fire Department personnel spoke to The Northern Light about their marathon responsibilities.

Nick Warner was seated with others behind an information table in the fire station’s garage. 

“We have people on the mountain that are there to help facilitate the people moving up and down, because if there’s any medical emergencies on the mountain, they can respond to it faster,” said Warner. Warner said this was to avoid spending crucial minutes sending personnel up the mountain, which would displace runners and crowds. 

10-year fire department veteran Ambra Woodard, seated next to Warner, said dedicated equipment is needed for mountain rescue. “We actually have a side-by-side ATV that we can take up that goes a little faster,” which runners usually move to accommodate because — according to Woodard’s observation — “[the runners are] like ‘oh, this is new. It’s not a fire truck so I’m not gonna freeze.’” Combined with dedicated teams along the entire route with site-to-site radios, she says her department is prepared for most of the race’s hazards. 

Providence ER personnel Jamie and Brad — both introducing themselves only by first name — were right at the city’s outskirts, outside the Providence Seward Medical Center on Lowell Canyon and First Avenue. Watching the now barely-visible men’s runners scale the mountain’s upper slope into the cloudline, they held binoculars up to their red-white-and-blue-glitter-lined faces to get a closer look. 

Brad said the biggest challenge was “setting up a proper triage and kind of knowing what to expect,” with emphasis on being “over prepared.” Jamie said part of these preparations was figuring out “how to set up and accommodate all of the patients in such a small space in such a rural area.” For Brad, an Anchoragite, this was his first year staffing the ER at Mount Marathon. Jamie, however, is from Seward and said this was her second year. 

“Last year we just had a whole lot of smiley racers who needed stitches,” Jamie said of her prior experience, “All of them said they were gonna do it again next year, that was worth it.” 

For observers, the intensity of the competition is part of the fun. 

Ruth Hoveland and her husband — who declined to provide his name — were observing racers near the starting line. The couple hailed from Minneapolis, from which they embarked on a three-month Alaskan vacation. Hoveland last saw the race 21 years prior when she said her kids were still teenagers. 

“We thought it was interesting,” said Hoveland, “we saw everybody in costumes, and we saw how crazy steep the mountain was, and it felt very Alaskan, and it was just kind of a novelty.” 

Jean Thompson — a nurse and former UAA Medical Assisting Program instructor at the School of Allied Health — traveled from her current home in the Napa Valley area of Northern California. Her husband is a civil engineer and former UAA faculty member who taught  project management. 

He had been running the race 15 consecutive years, save for 2019. That year, climate-stoked fires brought smoke drift from British Columbia, closing off the junior race because of health risks to children. The race was canceled for all contestants in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Because of higher-than-average precipitation in 2023, the race was “rainy, miserable, muddy,” she said.

Thompson recalled in reference to last summer’s deluge that while her husband could previously finish in about an hour and a half, he took over an hour longer last year, saying, “I thought he was missing in action.” 

This year, however, rain was light during the adult races, affording some runners amiable conditions to break personal records.

Near the base of Lowell canyon where both Providence and residential abodes resided, onlookers scouted the trails and ridgelines of Mount Marathon for the faraway glints of competitors. 

Some took to viewing live aerial and ground-level coverage on their phones, which may have contributed to the choked network speeds at the event. 

Race crews stood in waiting with pickup trucks and a van with a dish shaped receiver mounted on the roof. Timers and coordinators sat at folding tables surrounded by monitors and laptops as they kept track of times and positions. News crews from both broadcast and print stationed themselves along the route for coverage.

After the competitive push to the mountain and steep, crowded ascent of its slopes, the downhill race is swift and comparatively spread out. 

For the men’s race, David Norris of Steamboat Springs, Colorado had a spacious lead for first place. At 40 minutes and 37 seconds, he overcame second-place finisher Max King of Bend, Oregon by over two minutes, and beat his personal and overall race record by more than a minute. 

As is customary, a police cruiser escorted the leading runner down Lowell Canyon road into the applause of observers downtown. Once past the finish line, staff greeted the runner with water, energy drinks and overturned pails to sit on behind temporary orange barriers. The views of Resurrection Bay and rows of support awaited all who reached the finish line. 

The podium  in front of Ranting Raven bakery and gift shop had four levels. The podium and the announcer’s table sat atop the parked flatbed trailer, where a group of attendees called finishers’ names from the loudspeakers. Crowds of onlookers cheered as race champions took their positions. 

In front of the trailer were Dorian Gross and Linda Rao. Their parents cheered when not one, but both of their sons were called to the podium. Those sons were Ali Papillon and Bodhi Gross, who took fourth and fifth place respectively. Rao was at the finish line to welcome both sons with a hug and audible cheers. She and Gross reflected on their family’s history with the race with The Northern Light. 

“They’ve been doing it since, like maybe thirteen and nine,” said Gross, who said he’d been competing since his late 30s. In their first junior championship, the two boys came in second and fifth respectively. In 2022, Papillon reached second in the boys’ race. Gross and Rao themselves had been competing since 2015. 

“I couldn’t even hold the video still because I was all over the place, I was screaming at the top of my lungs,” said Rao.

For the later women’s race, Klaire Rhodes of Anchorage would emerge first at a fittingly-Alaskan 49 minutes and 49 seconds. Her lead was tighter than Norris’s, with a 31 second gap between her and second-place finisher Kendall Kramer of Fairbanks. 

Like Norris, this was Rhodes’ sixth time running Mount Marathon — although her own history with the race began in 2018. Her climb to the top of the podium was gradual. Rhodes placed  26th in her first year, then 12th in her next, two years in fifth and last year in fourth. Rhodes “felt great” about her win this year, identifying Kramer as the challenge that pushed her past the mountain peak. While both competed closely for the lead position, it was the downhill portion that saw the Anchorage runner to victory. 

“After the halfway point, you kind of lose all the spectators, and it gets really quiet. That’s when your legs really start to hurt, and that’s where [Kramer] was really pushing me,” Rhodes said, “I had a blast with it, and tried to soak in all the good energy on the road.” 

According to the vendor and owner of the Happy Hippie specialty store in Anchorage, Shayla Jolley, this energy is what draws thousands to Seward every year. She had been at the race festival every year it’s been active since 2019, and said the foot traffic to her store’s canopy was comparable to any similar festival in Anchorage.

She asserted that this was a product of what Mount Marathon represents.

For out-of-state tourists, she said of Alaskan racers, “It’s a great representation of our spirit and I think our gumption, like Alaskans are just built different.”