Mount Marathon Race, live.

Seward's Fourth of July race up the mountain and back

Every Fourth of July, the biggest draw of Seward's Independence Day celebration in Alaska is a race up Mount Marathon and back down.

The Mount Marathon Race began, the story goes, with a bet between two sourdoughs over whether the mountain could be climbed and descended in under an hour. The loser bought drinks for the crowd, and the winning racer took one hour and two minutes. It became an organised run in 1915. The 2027 race is on Sunday 4 July, as always on Independence Day.

The organiser calls it the toughest 5K on the planet. The full course is about 3.1 miles with an elevation gain of nearly 3,000 feet, and leaving out the road approach the climb is about 2,675 feet in 0.9 miles. The slope averages 34 degrees. There are steep inclines, slippery loose rock and shale, creek ledges with running water and a cliff to get down near the end. Men and women race the whole mountain in separate starts, and juniors turn at the halfway point.

Entry is through a lottery and priority registration, which for 2027 run from 1 to 31 March 2027, and the race has its own rules for priority status, ten year status and skipping a year. The 2027 race is the 99th running.

The 2026 schedule put the start line at 4th Avenue and Adams Street, with racers gathering there about ten minutes before each start, and the women's and men's start times alternate from year to year. The organiser also streams the race live.

On Livebib you can follow a participant who chooses to share their own live position from the phone they carry. This is not the organiser's timing, and the official results come from the Mount Marathon Race.