The popularity of long-distance mushing has been waning in recent years, a trend propelled by rising costs and a fading appetite for racing long, unsupported stretches through Alaska wilderness.

But the Yukon Quest Alaska is taking a new path, both literally and figuratively.

The Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race was traditionally among the toughest in mushing, a 1,000-mile trek between Fairbanks and Whitehorse, Yukon. But the race splintered in 2022, with two shorter races being operated separately in Alaska and Canada. Last month, the Canadian Yukon Quest announced it isn’t running this year.

Yukon Quest Alaska race marshal John Schandelmeier, himself a notable distance musher with two wins at the Quest, has developed an approximately 800-mile route for the 2026 race that starts and ends in Fairbanks.

“I’ve been pushing this route for several years, knowing that we were never going to get back with the Whitehorse operation and making a thousand-mile race,” Schandelmeier said. “Plus the thought that there’s not that many people capable of doing a thousand-mile race anymore. There used to be, but there’s not anymore.”

The race starts at 11 a.m. Saturday at the Morris Thompson Cultural Center in Fairbanks.

While centering the race around Fairbanks is not novel, the trail passes through a number of communities that have never hosted checkpoints at a major race.

After heading northeast from Fairbanks, the race wheels north out of Circle to Fort Yukon before bending down southwest along the Yukon River.

It passes through Beaver, Stevens Village and Rampart before heading east at Tanana. Mushers will head to Nenana before a final sprint north back to Fairbanks.

Before the route was solidified, Schandelmeier made some initial outreaches to the villages to gauge interest.

“They’re all very excited about having a race come through,” he said. “Fort Yukon, Beaver, Rampart have never had a race come through there.”

After weeks of work breaking and prepping the trail, Schandelmeier said, the route is ready. And after billing the race at 750 miles in the lead-up, he said the actual distance is 803 miles.

On top of the distance and typical frigid Interior conditions, the race is expected to add layers of difficulty with changes of elevation and some tough runs between checkpoints.

“It’s considerably different than running the Iditarod,” Schandelmeier said. “We cross two summits, two that are wind-blown and need tripods (as markers), not just stakes. That run from Tanana to Manley is not flat. Even the Yukon (River) will be challenging.”

In total, there are seven mushers taking on the longer distance, but Schandelmeier believes it could be maintained as the standard going forward.

“I think the race we’re doing is the Quest of the future,” he said. “And I think we’ll get more participation after this year. The first year is always a little tough.”

With no signs of the Whitehorse race returning, it’s possible that Yukon Quest Alaska could draw more Canadian mushers in the near future.

And with a guaranteed purse of $35,000 for this year’s race, Schandelmeier expects it to continue to grow in popularity with Interior mushers, especially those with smaller dog yards.

“With a start and finish in Fairbanks, the city has really come on board and will continue to as it grows,” he said. “We have a ton of local sponsors jumping in and doing what they can.”

The 800-mile race will be the closest to the original distance that has existed since the 2022 split. But Schandelmeier doesn’t believe it’ll grow to its previous distance.

“I don’t know how much interest there is in a thousand-mile race anymore,” he said. “There’s a couple long runs in the Quest. And the last time I was a trail coordinator on that race, I talked to mushers, and they said, ‘Man, too long of runs, cold and dark, you never see anybody.’ ”

Jeff Deeter, Jason Mackey and Keaton Loebrich, all out of Fairbanks, are registered for the distance race. All three were 2025 Iditarod mushers with experience in longer distances.

The same is true for Two Rivers musher Josi Shelley, who raced the Iditarod in 2024.

Schandelmeier said the enthusiasm among the villages that haven’t hosted a checkpoint is high. And while races have not run through those areas, there is a deep history of running dogs in the area.

“All these villages have their own little races in the spring,” he said. “So this is just another race.”

There is also an 80-mile fun run included under the Yukon Quest Alaska banner. While Schandelmeier doesn’t have much involvement, he said it’s vital for musher development.

“It’s a very important race, and it’s a good thing,” he said. “It costs little to nothing to get in it and it’s very well-supported.”

WASHINGTON — We’re only one month into election year 2026 and it’s already clear that the incumbents in Alaska’s federal races have a lot of money to defend their seats.

U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan raised nearly $7.5 million last year, according to his latest campaign finance report.

“We’re feeling incredibly strong about where our campaign is,” campaign spokesperson Nate Adams said. “Our fundraising is on track, and our support continues to grow.”

The campaign of Democratic challenger Mary Peltola is also touting its fundraising success. Peltola has only been in the race a few weeks and hasn’t had to disclose her contributions yet. But a Peltola campaign press release says she raked in $1.5 million on the first day after she announced. The campaign declined an interview request.

Campaign strategist Jim Lottsfeldt, who led a 2020 group that tried to unseat Sullivan, said the senator’s $7.5 million actually doesn’t give him much of a head start.

“Mary Peltola is in the middle of a money bomb, and she will raise every bit of that and more, and I think ultimately outspend Dan Sullivan,” Lottsfeldt said.

The U.S. Senate race is, so far anyway, a referendum on how people feel about President Trump, he said, and money doesn’t tell the whole story.

“The problem with money in this race is there’s going to be so much of it that most people will shoot their TVs and their computers,” he said. “And I’m not sure how it’s going to all get spent in a way that actually is effective.”

In the U.S. House race, Congressman Nick Begich’s campaign raised $3.2 million last year. Paul Smith, a consultant to the Begich campaign, said that’s an Alaska record for a U.S. House race in a non-election year.

“We feel really good about it and are proud of the start that he has to this election cycle, on the fundraising side,” Smith said.

Democratic challenger Matt Schultz, an Anchorage pastor, filed to run against Begich in October. He reported contributions of $300,000 by year’s end.

Schultz campaign manager Mai Linh McNicholas, said it’s a good foundation, with contributions from more than 2,000 people. She said Schultz set a fundraising record, too.

“It’s the most that any first-time candidate has raised, in an off-year, for this seat in Alaska,” she said.

An Independent candidate is also running for U.S. House — fisherman and retired educator Bill Hill. He hasn’t had to file a campaign finance report yet but his team says he’s raised, like Schultz, more than $300,000, and he did so in his first week.

The reports show Sullivan and Begich, like most incumbents, get significant money from Political Action Committees affiliated with corporations, trade associations and political groups. About half of their 2025 contribution totals are from individuals. The rest largely came from PACs, or “other authorized committees.”

The Alaska ferry system is at risk of running out of operating funds this summer because of a frozen federal grant program, according to state transportation officials.

Nearly half of the Alaska Marine Highway System operating budget in the current calendar year was intended to be funded with a grant from the Federal Transit Administration, according to a budget approved by lawmakers last year. But the grant, which was expected to be issued last year, has not yet been released.

That has left a nearly $78 million hole in the $170 million budget for the current calendar year. Without a solution, ferry boats that provide transportation to communities in Southeast Alaska, Kodiak and along the Aleutian chain could be left without the funds needed to continue running as soon as July.

Amid a tight revenue outlook, the state has few options for backfilling the $78 million that it was counting on receiving from the federal grant, lawmakers in the House and Senate budget committees said in recent days.

The federal grant, known as the Ferry Service for Rural Communities Program, was created through the bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed in 2022.

Alaska’s U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski was instrumental in creating the program and designing it to benefit the ailing ferry system, which has seen decreased service and reliability amid years of declining state investment.

Murkowski’s spokesperson Joe Plesha said Monday that the senator had “received a commitment” that the grant funding window would open “this spring.” However, he said her office didn’t have a specific time for releasing the funds, nor any specifics on the amount of funding that would be available this year, given that funding was not released last year. The state is again banking on a federal grant through the program to fund ferry operations in the 2027 calendar year.

In the first three years of the federal program, the state received $45 million, $38 million and $66 million for ferry operations. Because of the grant timeline, the Alaska Legislature has built the grant into its annual budget each year before the specific funding amount has been announced.

Last year, lawmakers — at the request of Gov. Mike Dunleavy — built a $78 million federal grant for ferry operations into the state budget. But after President Donald Trump took office, the grant application window never opened.

In response to a request for comment, the Federal Transportation Administration said in a December statement that it “anticipates announcing a Notice of Funding Opportunity for its Ferry Programs in 2026.” The FTA press office did not provide an explanation as to why the funding had not been awarded in 2025, or when in 2026 the funding opportunity would open.

The office did not immediately respond to additional questions sent Monday.

Murkowski personally reached out to U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy “to ensure that steps are taken so that this funding can get out the door as soon as possible,” her spokesperson said in December.

In previous years of the program, the application window has opened between April and July. Specific funding amounts were announced between five and six months after the window opened. That means that even if Trump administration opens an application window in the coming days or weeks, the funding amount awarded to Alaska likely won’t be known until after the legislative session ends.

State transportation officials, including Transportation Commissioner Ryan Anderson, told the Alaska Senate Finance Committee on Monday that they will be traveling to Washington, D.C., later this month to advocate for the funding to be released.

But they provided few details on how they would proceed if the funding is not awarded in time to keep ferries running through the summer months, which are the system’s most busy and most profitable.

Department officials are proposing to move the ferry system from a calendar year budget cycle to a two-year cycle, which would give them more flexibility in balancing state and federal funding streams.

One idea that Anderson raised was to shore up the system’s available funding by selling the Matanuska, a mainline vessel built in 1963. That ferry has not been in regular operation since 2020 due to structural problems that have been deemed too costly and complicated to fix. Instead, the vessel has been used to house ferry workers in Ketchikan amid a housing crunch that has made it difficult to attract new workers and fill vacancies. But Anderson said other operational ferries, the Kennicott and the Columbia, could be used intermittently as so-called “hotel ferries,” instead of the Matanuska.

It is unclear how much the state would save by selling the Matanuska. In 2022, the state sold the Malaspina — another mainline ferry built in 1963 — to Alaska businessmen John Binkley and David Spokey for $128,250.