Hikers take two days. Crow Pass runners do it in hours

At 9 a.m. Saturday, 150 runners will leave the Crow Pass Trailhead above Girdwood and race 23.5 miles of Alaska backcountry to the Eagle River Nature Center — a route many hikers take two full days to finish. The fastest of them will do it in about three hours.

This is nothing like a city race. The course runs past glaciers and snowfields, through chest-high brush, over rocks and roots, and straight across the cold, fast-moving Eagle River. There are no aid stations. Course markings are minimal, cell service is nearly nonexistent, and runners are expected to carry their own gear and help each other if something goes wrong. That bare-bones wilderness setup is both the appeal and the danger.

You can't just sign up. Entrants need a backcountry racing resume to prove they can handle it, and first-timers have to attend a safety meeting the day before. The race has run this same route since 1984, and since 2018 it's been a fundraiser for Healthy Futures, a youth-fitness program of the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame.

Watching is almost as committing as running. The only easy vantage points are the start at Girdwood and the finish at Eagle River — everything in between means hiking the same wild country the racers are crossing.