For many of them, the 350- to 1,100-mile human-powered trek up and over the Alaska Range to McGrath, or on to Nome, is the challenge of a lifetime.

Jose Diego Estebanez from Spain, already a member of that select group of mountaineers who have stood atop Mount Everest, is coming to try to join an even more select group -- the handful of people who have traveled the frozen Iditarod Trail across Alaska from Knik at the head of Cook Inlet to the Bering Sea.

Thirty-six-year-old English businessman Christian Cullinane is planning to slip out of his business suit and into arctic riding gear to pedal a mammoth-tired mountain bike to McGrath, hoping to raise money for Winston's Wish, a child bereavement fund.

Slovenian skier Rajko Podgornik -- who challenged the trail to McGrath in 2006, only to be forced out by a bum knee at the Rohn checkpoint, about 130 miles short of his goal, is back this year to try and ski to Nome.

All told, nearly half of the field is composed of foreigners, mainly Europeans. Another 13 are coming north from more than a half-dozen states in the Lower 48 to chase the adventure that is Alaska.

TRAIL BREAKERS ARE KEY

Among the Outside notables is Jay Petervary from Jackson Hole, Wyo., who last summer won the two-week-long Great Divide Race through the Rocky Mountains from Canada to Mexico.

Petervary has been something of a regular in Alaska recently. He won the Susitna 100 in 2006, but in the longer races he hasn't been able to get past Alaska's own Peter Basinger.

Basinger, a 26-year-old bike mechanic and student with the motor of a professional bike racer, set a record for the human-powered Iditarod race to McGrath last year when he made it in 3 days, 5 hours, 40 minutes. The speed was fast enough to have made him competitive in the early years of the dog-powered Iditarod.

Basinger isn't expecting a repeat this year. Coming off a second-place finish in the blizzard-pounded Susitna 100 last weekend, he's expecting a lot of bad trail and bike pushing.

Invitational race director Bill Merchant warned Tuesday that the way the weather is shaping up, the race could turn into a "slog.''

Because of low visibility in blowing snow, pilot Barry Stanley was unable to land at Puntilla to offload supplies for racers headed north.

"We did into Finger Lake,'' the next checkpoint back along the trail to Knik, Merchant said. "It was nice, but they've had between four and five feet of snow in the last couple days. I've got trail breakers already lined up.''

Cyclists can't ride through four to five feet of fresh snow. They really can't even push a bike, the norm on stretches of the Iditarod Trail, through that much snow. Skiers or runners equipped with snowshoes can plod on, but when conditions limit speeds to around 1 mph, it's hardly worth it.

The good news for competitors is that Merchant's trail breakers -- who have teamed up with Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race trail breakers -- will have some sort of snowmobile trail packed out to Rainy Pass by early this week.

And while those trail breakers are fighting their way north, others are supposed to be trying to punch the trail through from the other direction -- from Rohn to Rainy Pass and then Puntilla.

Luckily, Merchant said, "they don't have an abnormal amount of snow at Puntilla, but there is more than normal at Rohn."

SNOW, RAIN AND SNOW

That has once again raised concerns about avalanche dangers high in the Alaska Range. McGrath snowmobiler Richard Strick died in an avalanche in the Dalzell Creek drainage below Rainy Pass while working to break the trail open for the Tesoro Iron Dog and the Iditarod in 2006.

Stanley used to work as a guide out of Finger Lake and broke trail from there to Rohn for years. Merchant said Stanley hoped to get into the Pass to examine snow conditions before trail breakers arrive.

There is hope the snow could stabilize. Even as warm, wet weather was pushing up over the Alaska Range into the Interior at midweek, the National Weather Service was predicting an "omega block'' developing out over the Bering Sea to the west.

A similar barrier of air in the upper atmosphere brought Alaska a long, stable period of subzero cold from late January into mid-February.

The question for Invitational competitors is whether any new cold will arrive soon enough to firm up trails put in over deep, new snow.

"I wouldn't say it is going to be a walk in the park,'' Merchant said, noting the volume of snow north of Anchorage.

"Before it started raining on it at Yentna (Station),'' he said, "if you went off the trail, you went in up over your head."

The weight of rain shrank the depth of the snowpack, but there's no guarantee it's much better for travel. Now, instead of people going in up to their necks in fluff, Merchant observed, they might posthole through hard pack up to their knees.

And it looks worse as racers move up off the Yentna and Skwenta rivers into the foothills of the Alaska Range.

"Shell Lake had 40 inches (of snow) in the last three days,'' Merchant said.

That's enough to go waist to chest deep on most people, and it only took snow knee deep to scare off nearly half of the field for the shorter Susitna 100 (miles) and Little Su 50K races last weekend.

Merchant isn't expecting that to happen with the Invitational. Most people, he noted, have invested so much -- both financially and emotionally --in getting to McGrath or Nome, they'll at least give the race a go and see what happens.

Sometimes too, Basinger added, what looks horrible can turn out OK.

Basinger was one of those who stuck it out in the tough conditions of the Susitna 100 to finish second behind a skier in 25 hours, 30 minutes, averaging nearly 4 mph.

"The way I kind of broke it down was this way: 25 miles of (bike) pushing, 50 miles of really slow granny-gear riding, and 25 miles manageable, but not fast. Our longest push was Flathorn (Lake) to Eagle Song (Lodge), about 22 miles."

But even in that stretch, he said, there was a little riding, but he appreciated "those little breaks where you're able to ride and help your feet out a lot." And, he added, he enjoyed himself in bizarre, masochistic way.

"It was fun to have it fast last year and the year before,'' he said, "but it just felt like more of an event this year."

Ah yes, Alaska. Live the adventure.

If it doesn't maim you.

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ON THE WEB

• Iditarod Invitational: www.alaskaultrasport.com

• Peter Basinger blog: akpete.blogspot.com

• Iditarod Invitational blog: iditarodtrailinvitational.blogspot.com