
The first U.S. National Toboggan Championships took place at the Camden Snow Bowl in 1991. Photo by Isaac Remsen/Camden Snow Bowl
The U.S. National Toboggan Championships at the Camden Snow Bowl is believed to be the only organized traditional wooden toboggan race in the country — and perhaps the world.
Holly Anderson works for the town and has been involved in the race for years. This year’s event, scheduled for Jan. 31 to Feb. 2, is open to 400 teams of two, three or four. Revenue goes back to the Snow Bowl’s operating budget. The race is open to spectators, but be warned that you might find yourself at the top of the chute next year. “A lot of the spectators come back as racers,” Anderson said.
This interview has been edited for length. For more information, visit camdensnowbowl.com.
What is the history of the championship?
Let’s go back to the beginning of the toboggan chute. The toboggan chute was originally conceived of and built in the late 1930s, which is the same time the Snow Bowl was being built. It was a group of volunteers, community members, town citizens — not just Camden, but surrounding towns back in the ’30s — that wanted to develop the Snow Bowl as a place to do outdoor recreation. In those early days, they celebrated with a big winter carnival. The toboggan chute was an activity for people to do that didn’t ski.
Over the decades, its popularity waned and grew and cycled through. It fell into disrepair a couple different times. It was rebuilt in the ’60s, again in the ’80s, and again a third time in early 1990. All along, the Snow Bowl being a municipally owned recreation area and ski area, it has relied on a lot of volunteers to keep it going and fill in the holes in the town budget to keep it going.
Feb. 24 of that year, in 1991, was the first one. I think it was like 60 teams raced that first year. We’ve held the Toboggan Nationals ever since then. This will be our 34th year.

The costume competition is just as fierce as the race at the annual U.S. National Toboggan Championships. Photo by Isaac Remsen/Camden Snow Bowl
What are the rules of the toboggan championship?
On the website, there is a link to our rules. If you’re going to build a toboggan, there are specifications that your toboggan has to adhere to to be a “traditional” toboggan, but also to be safe. You’re going for over 400 feet in a wooden trough — the chute — and you’re traveling at speeds of 30 to 40 miles an hour. And then once you come out of the chute, you’re on the pond. Toboggans flip over, toboggans spin around, they do all sorts of things. What we don’t want them to do is, we don’t want them to break up partway down the chute or on the ice. We don’t want them to catch on something and jettison people out. We want them to run smoothly and safely. So there are rules that we have that specify the width of the toboggan, the length of the toboggan, the weight of the toboggan, what the end should look like.
Every toboggan that is brought in by a team is inspected. It gets weighed, it gets measured, it gets inspected.
What do you do to prepare the chute for the race?
We have a Zamboni. It’s a black fish tote. It holds water. It has some holes and some tubes out the back. There is some PVC piping and some soft, smaller tubes. There’s a pulley and a rope, and you fill the Zamboni at the bottom with water from the pond or the stream, which runs under the chute. And you’re at the top of the chute, and you’re pulling it up and down the chute, and you’re making ice. It’s all low key and typical Maine. It’s not automated.
[Stuart Young, another organizer] builds it to 3 inches thick of ice in the bottom of the chute. Literally, the week of racing, if there is cold enough temperatures, he will be there every morning in the coldest part of the morning and continuing building the ice. It’s literally just pouring water over the wood and doing it very, very slowly so that it will dribble and freeze.
I should probably call it something different. But it’s a Zamboni. It’s our Zamboni. A Maine Zamboni. A Maine Zamboni!
How would you describe the atmosphere of the weekend?
The vibe ranges from sheer terror and fear — like, “Oh my god, I’ve got to walk all the way up there to get to the toboggan chute? It’s that long?” It’s loud, you know. They’re standing in line, and they’ve never raced before, and they’re hearing other teams go down. It’s amazing how loud these toboggans are when they go down the chute. People are screaming as they go down. So there’s definitely the fear and trepidation. Once they make that first run, they can’t wait to take another one. Truly. It’s really exhilarating. It ranges across the board from that fear and trepidation to that excitement and happiness that they did it.
Do you know what the record is on the chute?
I would say it would be in the nine-second range. It’s really fast. The four-person teams can go pretty fast because they have more weight on them. A fastest time is a little bit hard to say because it’s not apples to apples across the board for all 400 teams, but let me look at the qualifying times for last year and see what we’ve got there — 9.3 seconds.

Holly Anderson, the co-chairperson of the U.S. National Toboggan Championships Committee, said the atmosphere is both “sheer terror” and “exhilaration.” Photo by Isaac Remsen/Camden Snow Bowl
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