Forget the debate over aluminum versus plastic toboggans. For a team of engineering students at Carleton, their toboggan of choice is made of concrete.
The concept can be just as dangerous as it sounds. At the annual Great Northern Concrete Toboggan Race, teams of university students from across Canada build toboggans out of concrete and metal, then gather on a hill, jump into their sleds and race down at speeds reaching 60 kilometres per hour.
Carleton’s 2012 team almost didn’t participate at this year’s event in Calgary Feb. 8-12 after the first competitive team to speed down the hill crashed into a wall of snow.
The University of Alberta’s toboggan broke through a safety barrier made of tires at the end of the run and hit the snow behind it, flipping over and tossing its five riders into the air. One participant broke his ankle, says Chris Zubick, a member of Carleton’s concrete toboggan team who was scheduled to go down the hill shortly after Alberta.
“I was so nervous,” says Zubick, who was operating the toboggan’s brake. “I was just, like, I really hope we live.”
He survived the run, leaving a trench six inches deep in the snow with the brake, and Carleton placed sixth overall out of 19 teams in this year’s competition.
Zubick, a third-year aerospace student, and Melanie Blainey, a third-year biomedical engineering student, are the co-captains of next year’s team. Zubick was this year’s metal captain, meaning he was in charge of the metal work used to build the toboggan. Blainey was the sponsorship captain.
The team was made up of 20 people who dressed up as characters from the TV show South Park, this year’s theme, Blainey says.
For the spirit portion of the competition, each team has to have a theme uniting their toboggan design, their costumes and the technical display they set up with information about their toboggan.
The team is divided into groups, with each working on a different part of the toboggan.
One group is responsible for making the concrete mix, which needs to be strong but also light enough so that the toboggan doesn’t exceed the 300-pound weight limit, Zubick says. Another group is responsible for the brake, and there’s also a steering group.
Once the toboggan and technical display are built, they’re shipped to the competition in pieces. The team then puts the pieces back together at the race site.
On race day, the toboggans go down the hill in pairs. The winner moves on to the next round.
“It’s just basically like March Madness elimination round,” Blainey says, adding the team with the fastest recorded time overall is named king of the hill.
While Blainey and Zubick say competing is a lot of fun, the race isn’t taken lightly. Participants have to sign a waiver and all toboggans must have a roll bar for safety, according to the competition’s rules.
And safety isn’t the only challenge. The brake on the Carleton team’s toboggan broke the day before it was due to be shipped to Calgary, Zubick says.
In true Canadian style, the team fixed the problem with duct tape, testing the solution out in the civil engineering lab at Carleton and using it again in Calgary, he says.
“When we were on top of the hill, the volunteers and the safety guys were talking to each other and they were like, ‘They’re not going to stop. Their brake is not going to work,’ ” Zubick says. “And we had the second-best breaking distance out of any team.”
Zubick and Blainey have already started work on the 2013 toboggan. Blainey says she’s trying to secure more sponsors so the team can expand to 30 participants. Zubick says he’s already begun to plan a different toboggan design from the one used for the past few years.
The change will begin with a new theme: Christmas. It sounds strange, they say, but they think it will make them recognizable as a team. They hope to make presents for all the other teams based off of their themes and hide them under a tree as part of their technical display.
The co-captains also say they hope to return Carleton to its glory days next year. It has been a few years since the team has placed in the top three.
“I really want to clean up,” Zubick says. “I want first place, I want all the awards we can get, and I think we can do it.”
The 2012 Carleton concrete toboggan team
- David Mills (Head captain)
- Jamie Barresi
Age: 22
Program: Fourth-year computer systems engineering
Number of years on the team: Two, but helping out for four
Earliest toboggan memory: Riding a crazy carpet down a hill, hitting a small jump and doing a barrel roll mid-air when I was four. - Melanie Blainey
Age: 21
Program: Third-year biomedical engineering
Number of years on the team: Two
Earliest toboggan memory: My uncle pushing me down the hill at a local golf course and going straight into a tree. - Nickolas Bulger
Age: 19
Program: Second-year aerospace engineering
Number of years on the team: One
Earliest toboggan memory: Accidentally going off a jump at Mooney’s Bay and flipping mid-air, then somehow sticking the landing, only to hit a tree. - Andrew Campbell
- Nathan Davidson-Pilon
Age: 19
Program: First-year mechanical engineering
Number of years on the team: One
Earliest toboggan memory: Waking up early on a cold October morning to pour concrete. - Hillary Flesher
Age: 21
Program: Fourth-year civil engineering
Number of years on the team: Two
Earliest toboggan memory: I can remember grinding down some of the prettiest concrete skis that I have ever seen. Our skis were so smooth and strong and I can remember thinking how fast they were going to go. The mold was made perfectly with a nice slope on the front. - Jonathan Lewis
Age: 18
Program: First-year communications engineering
Number of years on the team: One
Earliest toboggan memory: Racing my GT snow racer down the hill at the park near my house. - Matt McEwen
Age: 25
Program: Fifth-year civil engineering
Number of years on the team: Four - Adam McNown
Age: 23
Program: Third-year civil engineering
Number of years on the team: One
Earliest toboggan memory: Mixing concrete outside in freezing weather. - Adam Morrill
Age: 21
Program: Fourth-year electrical engineering
Number of years on the concrete toboggan team: Three - Emma Paxton
- Megan Rice
Age: 20
Program: Third-year biomedical mechanical engineering
Number of years on the team: One - Kaitlyn Stockermans
Age: 23
Program: Fifth-year civil engineering
Number of years on the team: One - Taylor Spradbrow
Age: 19
Program: Second-year civil engineering
Number of years on the team: One
Earliest toboggan memory: My earliest memory is my parents taking me to the hill at the end of our street. - Erik Willis
Age: 21
Program: Fourth-year aerospace engineering
Number of years on the team: One
Earliest toboggan memory: Racing down hills in various toboggans as a kid, often building jumps to make it much more fun. - Kelsey Woodall
Age: 21
Program: Third-year civil engineering
Number of years on the team: One
Earliest toboggan memory: Watching the montage from the previous year in the first meeting. - Gen Viecili
Age: 20
Program and year: Third-year civil engineering
Number of years on the team: One
Earliest toboggan memory: Mixing concrete, casting cylinders and conducting slump tests to test our mix design. - Chris Zubick
Age: 26
Program: Third-year aerospace engineering
Number of years on the team: Three
Earliest toboggan memory: Dancing to the rumbling of the concrete mixer outside while snow was falling.
