2026 Knik 200 postponed due to trail conditions

It's deja vu for the South Central Alaska mushing community. There's very little snow in the MatSu Valley to start the race season. While the snow came on time this past October, November saw nothing but rain and ice. December temps dropped to well below the average for this time of year, and with those temps came hurricane force winds. Each weekend another windstorm blowing what little snow Knik and Wasilla still had completely away.

Teams once again have to travel away from their home trails in search of snow. Most are finding trails in and around Denali and Fairbanks, but with their feet of snow has also come extreme cold temperatures (that even prompted the Alaska State Troopers to warn residents to stay indoors until things warm up - mushers didn't listen). 

The Knik 100 was canceled due to weather as well as just not having any trails. Mushers were understanding and even thankful the race didn't try to make it work, but worry soon grew that the Knik 200 would soon suffer the same fate. There were rumors that the race would move to where there was snow for trails, but the board announced that they would decide and let mushers know on December 29.

So Alaska waited and hoped the wind would blow in some snow clouds. It didn't.

Well, there was that one day that had snow for about two hours, but it all blew away as fast as it fell.

And now, the Knik 200 board has announced that the race is not canceled, but postponed to the end of January. "We know that not all of you will be able to join that date," the board wrote in a simple facebook post Monday, "but hope that some of you still can!" With the new dates of January 24-25, the race will run at the same time of the very popular Kuskokwim 300 in Bethel. Several teams are signed up for both races, and it will be interesting to see what race they stay entered in. 

Many things will come into play as the deciding factor of where teams end up - mainly training hours. If South Central does not see snow soon mushers will be forced to spend a lot of time and money on the road traveling to trails that are runnable. That could force some to back out of the Kusko and stick with the Knik. Teams have until January 17 to drop out of the Knik 200 to receive their full refund.