Competitors prepare for annual Arctic Man

It's not flying up the mountain with the throttle wide open on his snowmachine that concerns Karl Brueggeman. It's not the relatively easy race course or the crowd of 10,000 people watching. What makes him a little nervous is the fact that he's dragging a skier behind him at 80 or 90 mph.

"That's the toughest part for me," Brueggeman said from his Big Lake home as he prepared to head north for the Tesoro Arctic Man at Summit Lake this week.

Weather permitting, today Brueggeman and his co-competitor Troy Craig will be among more than 30 teams zipping along a 5-mile course that includes having snowmachiners slingshot their skiing or snowboarding partners across the top of a mountain.

Entering its 17th year, organizers describe Arctic Man as the "ultimate adrenaline rush." Fans call it a rip-roaring party, and everyone calls it crazy.

The event begins with skiers or snowboarders at an elevation of 5,800 feet where they drop to 1,700 feet in less than 2 miles. At the bottom of a narrow canyon, the skiers and snowboarders meet up with their partners on snowmachines, who tow them with ropes more than 2 miles uphill at speeds of 80 or 90 mph. At the top, the snowmachiners release their partner over the side of the second mountain, where the skiers and snowboarders drop another 1,200 feet to the finish line.

"And these folks are not even hollering or screaming," said Maggie O'Hara, who runs Bill's Cat House with her husband. "It's an amazing sight." Each winter, the snowmachine dealers head to Paxson to watch the event and show off their equipment along with thousands of other vendors and fans.

"These guys are crazy, but extremely talented," said Bill O'Hara. The O'Haras describe the event as kind of a last hurrah for the winter season. People bring their snowmachines, from the hottest rides off the assembly lines to rebuilt antiques from the 1960s. "People sleep in their trucks, set up tents on their snowmachine trailers or sleep in their motor homes," Bill O'Hara said. "It's just an amazing thing."

The party surrounding the Arctic Man is almost enough in itself. Last year, a snowstorm forced organizers to cancel the actual competition.

"Everybody went and had a good time, but they couldn't do the race," Maggie O'Hara said.

While spectators may have had their fun despite the absence of the race, competitors were sorely disappointed. Brueggeman and his partner had practiced diligently prior to last year's competition.

"That was really depressing," he said of the last-minute cancellation.

This year, the duo hasn't gotten in as much practice time. Tuesday they were driving to Paxson, with plans to run the course Wednesday. But Brueggeman said the event is hard on his partner's legs, so they want to have at least one day of rest before the competition.

"It's a lot of training for a one little split moment," he said.

But in addition to an exhilarating ride and the congratulations of thousands of spectators, winning the Arctic Man can bring a decent monetary reward. Organizers were expecting the purse to be more than $100,000.

The competition is entirely based on speed -- whoever completes the course the fastest in each category, including men, women, skiers and snowboarders, wins. The course record is 4 minutes 17 seconds, and the quickest a snowmachiner has pulled a skier is 88.3 mph.

"At the Arctic Man you go fast or go home," organizers say on their Web page.