If Burning Man and a monster truck rally had a love child in the snowy mountains of Alaska, that would be Arctic Man. Squint to see snow instead of sand and listen for the roar of chainsaws splitting firewood instead of Om chants.
Part party, part ski and snowmobile race, part send-off to winter, Arctic Man saw 12,000 thrill seekers from around the state and beyond descend on an empty field in the Hoodoo Mountains near Summit Lake to form one of the largest cities in Alaska – albeit one only lasting from 4-10 April.
Adrenaline junkies and day drinkers gathered with snowmobiles, RVs, gasoline-fueled bonfires, overloaded four-wheelers, and kegs of homebrew buried in the snow, in a field where a week prior there had been just undisturbed snow – AKA “the middle of fucking nowhere”, according to a guy on the drunk bus.
Snowboarder Kiana Putman said the annual event was “like a hippie festival, but there are very few hippies here”. Though it is sometimes called “Burning man’s cold-ass brother”, there is much to distinguish Arctic Man from the more famous gathering in the Nevada desert.
Here, one can get reindeer on a stick from a food truck and pulled pork sandwiches after midnight. Strangers stroll up to their neighbors’ campfires for conversation and might be offered a beer, cheeseburger or flounder tacos.
Blaring country music competes with heavy metal, and every now and then a plume of black smoke shoots into the sky. (Bonfire? Couch? Snowmachine crash? People shrug it off.)
“Arctic Man is a weeklong, booze and fossil-fueled Sledneck Revival bookended around the world’s craziest ski race,” according to SB Nation.
This year, the slednecks swarmed together to break the Guinness World Record for the largest parade of snowmachines – or snowmobiles, as non-Alaskans call them – at one time. They watched skiers join forces with snowmachines that reached almost 90 mph, and they braved valleys not far from where avalanches killed a woman the day before Arctic Man began and a man the day after festivities ended.
At night, people pulled up to the beer tent in ATVs, wearing headlamps, Carhartt overalls, camouflage shorts, 80s ski jackets and crazy costumes. The bar – built from canvas, PVC pipe, metal beams and various – had sprung up overnight like a circus tent.
In Daisy Dukes and tank tops, bartenders navigated around a banana and a gorilla dancing together. The DJ spun from atop an industrial scissor lift. Tigger and a shark had a face off.
People couldn’t stop petting the guy with a bear hat made from an actual bear’s head.
It all began with a bar bet more than 30 years ago. The founder and race director, Howard Thies, bet two friends that he could beat them in a race on the hill. They each put $100 in the bartender’s bra, gathered snowmachine drivers and set off on the same course racers run today, starting at “the tit”. (“You know, because the top of a mountain looks like a tit,” said snowboarder Putman.) One guy went the wrong way into a canyon, and the other trailed behind Thies. By the time the third guy finished, Thies was having a beer at the finish line. He decided to do it again the next year as a fundraiser for the Fairbanks Alpine ski team.
Thies is the driving force behind Arctic Man, doing everything from registering people for their camping spots and recruiting athletes to serving as an auctioneer. “I do it all. I put the stakes in the ground myself … I help set the seed to make [Arctic Man] happen.”
Now, the 5.5-mile race, with a record speed of 92.3 mph, and the accompanying winnings – $61,000 this year for the men’s ski race – attract professional athletes, Winter X games champions and Olympians. A skier or snowboarder descends 2,000ft down the mountain, then grabs a tow rope attached to a snowmachine. The driver hauls the skier/snowboarder up a second mountain, and the skier/snowboarder lets go and barrels down the second mountain.
Putman appreciates how the community comes together at this one-of-a-kind event. Originally from Dillingham, Alaska, and now living in Girdwood, she waxed her board with brothers on another team and said that a competitor might lend an extra racing suit if needed. “This is a backcountry race. You can’t go to the store. There’s no Walmart nearby if you need a battery. This is a remote and unforgiving environment and people need to help each other out.”
A guy named Terry handed her a beer from his backpack at the finish line. “I don’t even have my (warm) clothes on and I already have a beer.”
Nearby, Rick Boyd grilled hot dogs and bratwurst. He hauled the grill, along with a cooler, several family members and a cloth chicken, in an aluminum skiff attached to the back of a snowmachine. “That’s the family caravan,” said Jay Gonzales, Boyd’s son-in-law. “Everyone rides in there.”
Gonzales has been coming to Arctic Man for more than 15 years. He married into a family of snowmachiners, and their two-story cabin is not far from the race. Half the family lives in Anchorage, the other half in Fairbanks; they meet at Arctic Man every year.
Brian Carter, an electrical contractor from Anchorage, comes to Arctic Man annually to “hang out with buddies and get away from work and people”. Sitting on a pile of wood by his group’s campfire, he gnawed on moose jerky while one of his sons fixed a snowmachine nearby.
Vince Barnett, a gold miner from Fairbanks, and his buddy Mike Fitch drove all night after work “to party and ride snowmachines”. But soft snow this year meant the riding “sucks”, so they mostly stuck to partying. Fitch poured a mixture of oil and gasoline on their fire, logs stacked high like a burning Jenga puzzle. When the logs fell, Fitch shoveled them back into the fire pit.
In the snow bank behind their camping spot, they built their own latrine.
“In Alaska, this is the shoulder season,” said Justin Lemoine, who sold helicopter tours of the surrounding areas and race course. “Snow is gone soon. Winter in Alaska is dark. You’ve got to get out. This is the last hurrah for winter – then it’s back to work and getting ready for fishing and hunting and summer.”
Laura Carpenter was the lone cross country skier hitting the snowmachine trails at Arctic Man. She lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her wife and daughter. Find her at twitter.com/lauramcarpenter
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