I must confess something: Since I was born and raised in Florida, I never went sledding while growing up. So on Friday morning of this week, I was a little nervous staring down the 440-foot toboggan chute at the Camden Snow Bowl.
In just a week’s time, hundreds of others — including many with more sledding experience than me — would be looking down the same chute, waiting their turn to compete in the U.S. National Toboggan Championships.
But as I crouched in front of two other people on a wooden toboggan as part of a media event promoting the competition, I listened carefully to the instructions to hold onto the boots of the man behind me. Then we rushed down the chute.
I was not prepared for how fast we shot down the frozen channel and out onto the ice of Hosmer Pond, before eventually skidding to a stop. I almost lost my hat along the way, but a fellow passenger caught it, probably with his face.
While I’m not sure how fast we went, Stuart Young, the chute operator, said the toboggans can reach 40 miles per hour.
The experience was thrilling, particularly given my sledding-free childhood. But it was just a small taste of what 400 teams of toboggan riders will experience on the weekend of Jan. 31 to Feb. 2, when they enter the Snow Bowl’s 34th annual championships.
It’s an annual rite of winter for the midcoast, bringing a flood of visitors to the region during an otherwise slow time of year. And this year, organizers have benefited from a recent run of bone-cold days that have helped ensure the chute is suitable for competitors.
The event started in 1991, when Ken Bailey, the general manager of the Snow Bowl at the time, decided to start it as a kind of joke, according to Young. Since then, it’s become an event that draws participants and spectators from across the continent. It’s also a big money-maker for the municipal Snow Bowl, bringing in about $100,000 last year.
The chute itself has existed since 1937, and Young said the current one, which was rebuilt in the 1960s and again in 1990, still has some pieces of the original.
The championships have hit some bumps in the ice in recent years. In 2021, the event was cancelled due to the pandemic. In 2023, Hosmer Pond wasn’t frozen, so the chute was moved to the skiing section of the Snow Bowl, said Jon Maxcy, a former champion of the competition who is also a member of the U.S. National Toboggan Championships Committee.
And the Snow Bowl has also been weathering financial trouble related to warming winters and years of deferred maintenance.
So organizers are thrilled when the weather does cooperate, as it has this year.
The championship brings thousands of people — and dollars — to Camden each year. Proceeds from the championships go towards paying some of the event’s bills and to the town for upkeep of the park, Young said.
“It brings a ton of economics to the town of Camden, Rockport, this area. The town is like it is in the middle of summer,” Maxcy said.
The event is so popular that some of the fastest teams have been around for decades. When I rode the toboggan, I was crouched in front of Camden-native Bruce Richards, a long-time champion with a team called the Big Kahunas. Maxcy, who is on another team called Whiskey on Ice, has been racing since 2014.
All this talk about champions does raise the question: how does one win a toboggan competition? In simple terms, the team that gets down in the shortest amount of time wins.
But it’s about the toboggan, Maxcy said. He and his teammates have built their sled from scratch, using lumber they’ve harvested from a tree they cut down. And while racing, they make sure to tuck in their bodies to make themselves as aerodynamic as possible.
The biggest contribution to speed though, Maxcy said, is the material on the bottom of the toboggan. But what wax or other material gives the greatest boost?
“That’s a big secret,” Maxcy said.
The U.S. National Toboggan Championships will be held from Friday, Jan. 31 through Sunday, Feb. 2, with qualifying runs on Saturday and finals on Sunday.