Ferry travel to Skagway resumed Friday following nearly a month of downtime caused by damage discovered at the town’s dock. Engineers found spreading cracks in the concrete structure holding up the vehicle transfer bridge, plus deterioration in the chains anchoring the floating dock — a combination serious enough to halt service entirely while crews assessed the risk.

Repair teams, including divers and contractors, worked continuously to fix the problem: all 19 anchor chains were replaced, the transfer bridge was reset into position, and electricians restored power to the float. State transportation officials confirmed the terminal’s return to service Friday morning, though they’d remained guarded about the timeline in the days leading up to it — wary of encouraging travelers to abandon backup plans in case repairs hit a snag.

The shutdown couldn’t have come at a worse time for the Klondike Road Relay, an overnight 100-plus-mile team race between Skagway and Whitehorse, Canada, that draws runners from across the region. With no ferry access, teams based outside Skagway had to improvise: some added a full day of driving, routing through Haines instead, while others paid for costlier private ferry crossings. Race organizer Ryan Sikkes said most teams likely built contingency plans around the Haines detour rather than banking on the terminal reopening in time.

Despite the last-minute good news, Sikkes and others involved in the relay noted that competitors in this event are used to adjusting on the fly — logistics, he said, are as much a part of the race as the running itself.