Wilderness Women showcase "survival" skills

JOHN DAVIDSON/Frontiersman reporter

TALKEETNA -- It wasn't your typical Saturday in Talkeetna. Not that anything is particularly typical about Talkeetna, but this weekend the small town was flooded with uncommon sights: Single women, camera crews, photographers and even a few Hollywood producers and screenwriters.

The occasion was the 19th-annual Wilderness Woman Contest and the 24th-annual Bachelor Society Auction and Ball, both of which were smashing successes this year, event organizers said.

During the day, the Wilderness Woman Contest -- a tongue-in-cheek competition to weed out those bachelorettes who won't cut it in the Alaskan wilderness -- took place downtown amid huge bonfires, camera crews and temperatures below zero.

The day began with all bachelors gathered at the train depot to welcome any single women coming in from out of town. But there weren't any.

Instead, a film crew from the Game Show Network got off the train with their own Wilderness Woman competitor from Los Angeles. A crowd of anxious bachelors and a guy in a moose costume received them.

A Belgian film crew was also waiting at the train depot, interviewing bachelors as their own single Belgian woman prepared to compete, sporting Belgian black, yellow and red.

An event organizer kicked off the contest by bellowing into a megaphone from atop a snowbank, "C'mon bachelors! You've waited all year for these ladies to show up, now let's cheer them on and see who's the best wilderness woman!"

The first event was a race down Main Street that involved running to fill up two five-gallon buckets of water and carrying them back. The catch: It had to be done in a full snowsuit and bunny boots, and every inch of water that spilled out of the bucket added 10 seconds.

After that was the infamous, "sandwich-making-beer-serving-firewood-hauling-on-a-snowmachine contest," which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: A bachelor sits watching "TV" (a cardboard TV, that is) while a wilderness woman races to a table 50 yards away, makes a ham and cheese sandwich (frozen), throws it at the bachelor while running to load a sled with firewood, loads the sled and pulls it across the finish line with a snowmachine.

The final event is an obstacle course that combines several wilderness-woman skills, including fishing, snagging, snowshoeing, rifle shooting, moose hunting and crawling through the snow.

This is where the guy in the moose costume comes in; he's the hunted moose, they shoot him with a paintball gun. He said any woman who wants an Alaskan bachelor has to be able to shoot a moose, of course.

Anchorage woman Heidi Weigner won the contest, proving herself the best match for any wilderness bachelor. Second place went to Hope Colitz of Ester and Lisa Cammileri of Anchorage took third.

The contest ended around 4 p.m., and with a couple of hours to kill before the auction, one local Talkeetna bachelor, known only by the name "Taurus," decided to pass the time in classic wilderness style: He got naked and jumped in the river.

Later that night, Weigner was crowned at the Bachelor Ball, a rowdy and rollicking dance held at the Sheldon Community Arts Hangar after the auction, featuring the live music of the Denali Cooks.

Will any lasting matches come from the Bachelor Auction and Ball? Perhaps. One famous Talkeetna bachelor, a man simply named Grog, didn't participate this year; he has a girlfriend. They met last year at the Bachelor Ball.

But even if no marriages come out of the weekend's festivities, an impressive donation to local charities , nonprofit groups and needy individuals will. Proceeds for the weekend included $4,775 from the 27 bachelors at the auction, one of whom fetched a $995 bid. An estimated $500 in raffle sales, $300 in bachelor catalogue sales and a donation of $1,000 put the total in excess of $6,500.