A company that could change forever the character of the historic Iditarod Trail has signed on as a principal partner for the Last Great Race.

A company that could change forever the character of the historic Iditarod Trail has signed on as a principal partner for the Last Great Race. Officials of the struggling Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race say they are pleased to be getting a $285,000 contribution from Donlin Creek LLC, but the money has raised obvious questions as to what Donlin is buying.

Donlin is a company set up by the Calista Corp., one of 13 Alaska regional corporations established by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act; the Kuskokwim Corp., a village Native corporation; and two major international gold mining companies -- Barrick Gold and NovaGold. They are trying to develop a $4.5 billion gold mine on the Kuskokwim River upstream from Bethel, an Alaska regional hub about 400 miles west of Anchorage.

The big impediment to mine development along the Kuskokwim near Crooked Creek is power. To make a mine a reality, Donlin needs a reliable and economic source of energy. They company looked at using a combination of diesel and wind to power the mine, but costs and concerns about fuel spills from heavy barge traffic on the river sank that idea. Donlin has since begun studying construction of a gas pipeline from Cook Inlet over the Alaska Range to near the Interior community of McGrath, and then west to Donlin.

The pipeline route would follow or parallel the Iditarod through some of the country that has for generations most defined not only the historic mail route itself, but the Iditarod dog race as well. The challenges inherent in overcoming the sheer ruggedness of the trail from Skwentna north to Finger Lake and on over Rainy Pass to Rohn and Nikolai have in many ways made the Iditarod what it is. Pipeline construction could change that.

Some contend a little earth-moving could make the trail better. A right-of-way sliced through the wilderness in order to bury pipe could define the trail, they say, and provide a smoother, better surface for dog teams to travel notoriously bad stretches like the sled-busting steps of the Happy River gorge, the musher-bashing side hills along the valley slopes of the Happy Valley as the trail climbs north to Rainy Pass, the dangerous ice of the Dalzell Creek gorge, and the troublesome "Buffalo Tunnels'' through the thicket of stunted forest between Rohn on the north side of the Alaska Range and the village of Nikolai.

In the overwhelmingly popular and yet still wild Chugach State Park above Anchorage, construction done years ago to bury a fiber-optic cable beneath the Powerline Pass Trail transformed it from an overgrown, rutted and dying trail to the most popular hiking and mountain biking route in the state. Burying a pipeline beneath the Iditarod might do the same for a trail now poorly maintained and in many places hard to find.

The heart of the race

But some contend that making the trail better by easing the obstacles could cut the heart out of the race. The two views are to some degree part of a philosophical struggle that has been under way within the Iditarod nation for years. Should Iditarod be a NASCAR-style race focused solely on which dog teams can get to Nome fastest, or should it hang onto the Jack Londonesque roots of an adventure that few dare to undertake and that even fewer ever finish?

A stock-car race needs a track. An adventure really needs only a route from point A to point B, and in some ways, the tougher the route the more the adventure.

Burying a pipeline is not a big issue in and of itself, said Judy Bittner, a state archaeologist and president of the Iditarod Historic Trail Alliance, but there could be a lot of discussions about "what they leave above ground.''

What happens underground means little, she said, but what is done to the landscape could mean a lot.