AUBURN – The city’s fifth annual Winter Festival features new events like a snowmobile rally as well as old favorites – as long as crews can get the snow to cooperate.
The festival is scheduled to kick off Friday around the city. The weekend-long festival includes movies, hay wagon rides, races and parades. Events are scattered around the city, at the Hilton Garden Inn, the Great Falls Performing Arts Center, Lost Valley Ski Area and Central Maine Community College.
Getting the dry, powdery snow that’s fallen so far this winter to cooperate has been the biggest challenge for organizers. Auburn Recreation Director Peter Bushway said public works crews are trying to build a snow playground for children out of the powdery snow at Central Maine Community College.
“They’re building a big sledding hill, and they’ll make a snow maze if they can get enough snow,” Bushway said. “There’s been a lot, but it’s so dry it won’t stick. They’ve been gathering up all the snow they can from the outlying fields, and that should work once they pack it all down. But still, we’re hoping for a good, wet snowstorm this week.”
The festival kicks off Friday with hayrides, sledding, a bonfire and $10 lift tickets at Lost Valley, a Greater Androscoggin Humane Society $25 benefit wine tasting at the Hilton Garden Inn and a family movie at the Great Falls Performing Arts Center. The city will be showing the fantasy movie “Snow Queen.”
Central Maine Community College will host the snow playground, a snow sculpting competition and an indoor carnival all day Saturday and Sunday. There will also be free cross-country skiing and snowshoeing lessons and sleigh rides.
The festival’s signature race, the Really Ridiculous Relay, will be back again this year at 11 a.m. Saturday at Lost Valley. Six-person teams compete in three heats – the human dog-sled pull, uphill snowshoe and downhill canoe. Winners receive free Lost Valley lift tickets.
Kids follow at 1 p.m. Saturday with a sled obstacle course. Racers navigate a slalom course, a limbo obstacle and a pyramid of haystacks. Shovel races are scheduled for 3 p.m. on the Bull Moose ski run.
The snowmobile rally dominates Sunday at Lost Valley to showcase rebuilt trails leading directly to the lodge. There will be antique machines on display from noon to 5 p.m, as well as a slope-side barbecue on the deck of the lodge.
It culminates in a 5:30 p.m. parade of snowmobiles with colored lights.
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