By Toby Koffman
This year, snow enthusiasts will have another reason to head for the hills once the snow arrives.
Ski tubing is the newest winter activity to hit the region, and its organizers are confident it will bring more people to ski areas this year.
Rob Reynolds, ski school director for Vorlage Ski Area, describes ski tubing as sliding down a hill with plenty of ‘bumps and jumps’ on a truck inner tube covered with a vinyl sheet.
At the bottom of the hill the tube and rider are hooked on to a rope and towed back to the top.
“At first I thought it would be scary, but it wasn’t,” says Janice Moore, secretary and tubing enthusiast with Vorlage.
“You go really fast, so you just hold on and spin around while the wind whistles and people scream.”
Organizers say because tubing requires no skill and it’s a lot cheaper than skiing, it will attract people to the hills who don’t ski.
“It’s great for families,” says Reynolds. “There’s no equipment to rent or buy. You just slide down the hill.”
A hill pass costs between $5 and $15 per person per day, compared to a regular ski tickets which can cost as much as $30.
At least two ski hill operators, Vorlage and Mount Pakenham, have been offering this new attraction since 1997.
Vorlage is located 25 minutes from downtown in Wakefield, and Pakenham is located 25 minutes past the Corel Centre off the 417.
Since tubing arrived in Ottawa, interest in the activity has grown enormously.
“The number of people who have tried tubing almost doubled last year over the first year,” says Wendy Munro, employee with Pakenham’s ski school.
“Last year we had about 12,000 people give it a try.”
Lisgar Collegiate ski club supervisor David McKay says tubing isn’t really organized yet, and none of his students have any plans to try it out.
“I think the novelty will wear off fairly quickly because there is a lack of challenge with tubing,” says McKay. “Also, these things go very quickly, and I’d be concerned about safety.”
But according to Munro, there’s very little to worry about when it comes to safety.
“We have done everything here to make tubing as safe as possible,” says Munro.
“There are always going to be risks, but people who like to ski know that.”
Some of the safety features Pakenham and Vorlage have built into their tubing hills are special snowbank walls and putting separation between tubing hills and ski hills, as well as from any hazardous objects like trees or rocks.
Pakenham has even built a basin at the bottom of its tubing hills to catch riders and prevent them from sliding into harms way.