It was quite a sight watching youngsters march up Black Mountain, many with parents, with cardboard and duct tape creations for the annual Cardboard Box Duct Tape Derby on a nice Sunday afternoon.
The final afternoon of the three-day Winterfest at the ski area included 14 imaginative colorful cardboard boxes in various sizes ranging from the yellow banana, the unicorn, to “The Martin’s” outhouse.
They gathered about three-quarters the way up as the entries were placed side by side across the slope. After a few minutes, organizers discussed what they want to do. Should they go all at once? Parents said that would not be a good idea.
It was decided to have them go one at a time, from left to right. But first, they decided to move up the hill a little further.
A few minutes later, as people gathered along the sides and further down the slope, it was time to start.
This event was kind of like a Forest Gump box of chocolates — you never knew what you were going to get from each box!
Some of them moved down the hill like a shot, either making it most of the way down or turning over and spilling their cargo. A couple others immediately began breaking up, one leaving a trail of red duct tape.
Hannah Brice Marcoux and Jack Bartash were inside a device created by Haley Rose, complete with a plastic windshield.
Hannah said it was called “The Galaxy Slayer,” a named she said had thought of last year.
It turned out they really didn’t have much use for their windshield as their ride took them down the slope backwards.
Perhaps the smoothest ride belonged to a cardboard box by the LeDuc family. That was because their creation included the weight of having six youngsters — Jack Darling, Julia Bernard, Ali Legere, and Henry, Ellie and Alice LeDuc.
Instead of gliding down the hill, their box carved its own trail as moved along in a slow, gentle ride.
The cardboard creation required six rolls of duct tape in four different colors, and three hours of work.
But there was also another issue. These boxes had no steering mechanism, so that couldn’t be controlled.
In two cases, that could have been dangerous. One drifted wide left and struck a telephone pole going at a pretty good clip, but the two occupants, both wearing helmets were unscathed.
A second two-person cardboard crew went off course as well and struck the ski patrol’s snowmobile, which had just arrived. They were also okay, but that drew an immediate response and ski patrol said this was getting way too dangerous and was stopping the event.
It was then decided to finish out the event after moving back down the hill a ways to slow the speed of the youngsters in the remaining boxes a bit.

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