Wisconsin track champion now a filmmaker, adventurer in Alaska

FAIRBANKS, ALASKA - When she was a student at Wausau East High School, Jayme Dittmar was a driven, adventurous teen who charged to two 800-meter state track championships.

A decade later, the 28-year-old is using that same determination and daring spirit to shine a spotlight on a highway development project in Alaska. She's the director of "Paving Tundra," a documentary she and a group of colleagues are producing about plans to build a 225-mile road across wilderness to an open-pit copper mine near the village of Ambler. The village is 45 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

The project, Dittmar said, could have deep environmental and cultural effects in some of the nation's wildest backcountry. The highway would run through the Brooks Range, one of the world's largest roadless areas. It is planned to run near six communities where native people live off the land by hunting and fishing, cross 161 rivers and streams (two of them designated by the National Park Service as Wild and Scenic Rivers) and pass through the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve. 

The road, Dittmar said in a phone conversation from Fairbanks, would disrupt "spawning habitat and also impact the migration of the caribou. ... It's not only the disturbance of building the road, but it also gives access to everyone, opening up the area to every white hunter coming up here from Anchorage and the lower 48. These are resources already ecologically strained from climate change and so many other things."

She and her colleagues spent last summer paddling rafts into the wild to film the region and interview people living in the Inupiaq and Athabaskan villages who would be affected by the changes. They are using Kickstarter to raise $15,000 to complete the project.

If all goes as the team plans, the half-hour documentary should be completed by March.

As of Monday afternoon, the group had raised nearly $10,000. They'll use the money to return to the backcountry for follow-up interviews, to meet and film the head of the copper mining company to get his perspective of the story and to nail down the final narration of the film.

That Dittmar ended up in Alaska surprises no one who knows her.

At home on a dog sled

The daughter of Duane Dittmar and Jan Bootz-Dittmar, she was taught to be self-sufficient and comfortable in the wilderness. The Dittmars, including Jayme's older sister Jenna, are top-flight dog sled racers on an international level.

"I grew up mushing in Wisconsin and traveling all around on the professional circuit," Jayme Dittmar said. "Mushing has played such a profound role in my life. It's where I feel most at home, on the back of a dog sled."

Dittmar "was such a unique kid in high school," said Tim Olson, the Wausau East High School track coach. "She was a really good high school athlete, plus she was a really, really good musher."

Olson saw some of the earlier film work that Dittmar did for the National Park Service.

"It was really well done," Olson said. He's watched the clips of "Paving Tundra," and is looking forward to the final product. He thinks the film will reflect pieces of all of Dittmar's experiences and skills. 

Along the way, Dittmar has been developing her abilities as a skilled photographer. She takes evocative photos of sled dogs, but she's also captured incredible images of the Alaskan landscapes and people, too.

The photos benefit from Dittmar's empathy for the native people and their culture and her love of the wilderness.

 "She's always had this appreciation of helping people with their problems," said her mother, Jan Bootz-Dittmar of Wausau. "She's gotten attuned to that kind of cultural lifestyle."

Jayme Dittmar's mushing ultimately led her to the story of "Paving Tundra."

'The will to keep carrying on'

After graduating from Wausau East High School in 2007, she received a full scholarship to attend the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities. Dittmar ran on the Gopher track and cross-country teams and studied journalism and conservation biology. 

Olson, who followed her running career at Minnesota, said she struggled through injuries and other setbacks. "There was a point where she almost stopped," he said.

Dittmar managed to overcome those obstacles, Olson said.

"Running there made her not only physically stronger," Olson said, "but also mentally stronger. You know, the will to keep carrying on."

She graduated in 2011. After a short stint as a nature interpreter and backcountry patrol ranger for the National Park Service in Grant Teton National Park in Wyoming, she went to work for the National Park Service at Denali National Park. Part of her job was to forge deep by dog sled into the wilderness where motor vehicles are banned, to take photos and write stories about native people and culture.

Dog sledding into villages helped her make connections. "People opened up to me," Dittmar said.

During one visit to a remote village, a native elder told her about the state's plan to build a road. "She asked me to tell people about this," Dittmar said. "She said, 'If this road goes through, it will kill us and kill our culture.'"

Dittmar splits her time between Fairbanks and a couple of the remote villages in the Brooks Range as she and her colleagues work to finish "Paving Tundra."

She also spends part of the year at the University of Montana, where she's a graduate student studying environmental science and natural resource journalism.

Alaska is her home now, though, she said.

"Honestly, it is just because there is so much wild country up here. That's what makes me feel safe," Dittmar said. "That's my comfort place."

To help fund 'Paving Tundra'

To donate money and learn more about "Paving Tundra," the documentary that Jayme Dittmar is directing, log on to Kickstarter at www.kickstarter.com and search for "Paving Tundra."