Are we not able to race at the Alaska track other than in the Special Events? Forgive me if this has been mentioned, but I couldn't find any mention of this. Odd - because I believe this is the only track that you can only race in one area of the game?
If you use said course maker theme, make sure you bring the road width down a lot. The default is about 10 miles wide and that combined with the fact that everything is white can make it hard to see where to brake or turn.
Alaska is a custom course generated in the Course Maker. I believe that the layouts you drive on the Rally events are randomly* generated.
*They could be the same for everyone because all courses from the course maker are limited to circuits and the rally is point-to-point. It's hard to say for sure unless you play it on two different game saves so I'm not 100% sure that they are purely random.