CAMDEN — After 90 minutes of deliberations, including spending an hour on Hosmer Pond, the Toboggan Committee has decided to move the races off of the chute and over to the Snow Bowl mountain. The exact location is being determined now.

The committee convened at 8 a.m. this morning to decide whether or not conditions at the toboggan chute, which spills racers onto Hosmer Pond, was safe enough to host two days of competition.

Working with Warden Mark Merrifield, of Maine’s department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, the committee decided the ice on Hosmer Pond was not thick enough for toboggan traffic.

The Toboggan Nationals will be held on Saturday only, this year. All the action will be on the snow on the lower part of Ragged Mountain, where the alpine ski trails are.

Snow Bowl crews are busy working on details of how to create a racing lane for the toboggans.

The adjusted schedule is as follows: 

• FRIDAY: Registration and inspections are open. Tobogganville and Vendor Row are open as usual. Practice runs are canceled. 
• SATURDAY:
  • 8:00 a.m. - Racing Begins
  • Morning - Single-run qualifying rounds for two-person, three-person, four-person and experimental teams
  • Afternoon - Two runs each for qualifying teams in two-person, three-person, and four-person teams (the committee reserves the right to adjust the finals format as time and conditions dictate)
  • Late Afternoon - Awards Presentation at the Camden Snow Bowl Lodge

All Winterfest events, including the Mardi Gras parade and dance, Point Lookout Fire and Ice event, snow plow parade, fireworks, among others, are unaffected and will proceed as planned. 

CAMDEN — Crazy winter weather is driving organizers of the annual Toboggan Nationals in Camden just about over the edge. The current temperature in Camden is 52 degrees Fahrenheit, there was a windy rainstorm yesterday, but there is a snowstorm coming (3 to 6 inches.... Thank you, Mother Nature). The ice has thinned on Hosmer Pond, but it is still almost thick enough to land a toboggan on, and some participants from away are going bat crazy themselves, wondering if they should get to Maine or stay at home.

Here’s the latest:

The 26th annual U.S. National Toboggan Championships Organizing Committee meets at 8 a.m. Friday morning, Feb. 5, at the Camden Snow Bowl. A warden from the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife will be there to help assess the condition of the Hosmer Pond ice.

Test holes drilled in the ice Thursday afternoon, along the chute’s path on the pond, indicate that the ice is consistently 7 inches thick, 1 to 2 inches thinner from yesterday. There is also a lot of pooling of water from the recent rain that has yet to freeze.

The committee is hoping the dropping temperatures later this afternoon into evening will be a significant enough cool-off to help conditions. But the realists on the committee are saying that it is questionable whether the water on the surface of the pond will freeze over again before the pending snow departs and the really colder temperatures arrive Friday night.

That’s when meteorologists are predicting a low of 16 F.

So: No toboggan fun runs or practice runs, and 2- and 3-person first run racing tomorrow afternoon, Feb. 5, has been canceled.

The committee will decide tomorrow morning, Feb. 5, what the weekend will look like, and how to ensure that racers, sponsors and vendors still will have a good time outside at the Camden Snow Bowl, according to committee members.

The committee includes:

There are currently 324 teams registered for the 26th annual Toboggan Nationals, traditionally held the first weekend in February every year. The weather on the coast of Maine is never predictable, and the last time iffy ice conditions threatened business-as-usual at the chute was in 2001, when rain created 3 inches of standing water on top of the Hosmer Pond ice.

That marked an early end to the Toboggan Championships that year.

The same wet conditions prevailed in 2006, when torrential downpours and more than 2 inches of rain failed to deter the competition.

As for this year: We will let you know tomorrow morning.

Reach Editorial Director Lynda Clancy at lyndaclancy@penbaypilot.com; 207-706-6657