Race for the Ages
The U.S. National Toboggan Championships draws a crowd for a one-of-a-kind weekend in Camden.
It was a bitterly cold weekend in Camden when photographer Dave Waddell arrived at the U.S. National Toboggan Championships. He and a few friends had set up a tent at the end of the toboggan chute on Friday night, but when they returned the next morning, “All four posts had been completely sheared off by the wind coming across Hosmer Pond,” Waddell says. Their tent was nowhere to be found. So, they improvised with a makeshift fire pit and huddled around its warmth. The group watched as the winter landscape swelled with friends and families, and racers and spectators alike, all buzzing from the excitement in the air. It was an instant sense of community, and everyone was made to feel welcome, says Waddell. People came from around the world, traveling from as close by as “right down the road” to as far away as Australia. Waddell even met an Iditarod sledding coach from Alaska who was reveling at the chance to hang out in the freezing weather. Despite the biting cold, as many as 5,000 people attended, with upward of 400 competing teams. Waddell and his friends were one of those teams. Barreling down the 400-foot chute at 40 miles per hour and sliding across an icy pond was an experience like no other, he says. “I don’t know of anywhere else in the world where you can find something quite like this, and certainly not with the breathtaking backdrop of a place like Camden in the winter.” The 2020 U.S. National Toboggan Championships are scheduled for February 7–9.
Lots of history and community pride surround this race; a veteran racer from the Big Kahoonas, a team that has been competing in the event from its inception in 1991, is seen wearing a trophy hat and jacket from the mid 1990s. Toboggans waiting for their turn in the chute sit on a rack in Tobogganville, the area designated for vendors, event registration, and sled inspections.
Numerous commemorative Iditarod patches decorate a jacket. An accomplished dogsled coach is well-prepared for the cold in a fur-hooded jacket.
The three-person team dubbed Whiskey On Ice walks their sled back to Tobogganville after a run across Hosmer Pond. The 400-foot-long toboggan chute descends 70 feet before reaching the runout onto Hosmer Pond. It was first built in 1936 by a group of volunteers and has been rebuilt twice, once in 1954 and again in 1990, also by a group of volunteers and material donors.