Barrie dad builds 150-metre luge track in his backyard

Mike Rae’s backyard is a massive, frozen human pinball machine.

The Barrie dad has spent over 100 hours carving a 500-foot luge track into his backyard hill, complete with turns that send kids vertical, walls that just barely stop sledders from flying off the track and a chute that sends kids hurtling down at speeds of 25 km/h.

“Your teeth get cold because you can’t stop smiling,” said family friend Skye Polson, 19, who visited the Rae’s legendary track on a sunny Wednesday afternoon.

Rae decided to build the track after the family moved from a Toronto condo to the Barrie home in 2007. He wanted to put in a skating rink but the property was too sloped, so he set his sights on speedier pursuits — a toboggan hill.

“Every year, our technique got a little bit better,” said Rae. “I’ve gotten smarter.”

By all accounts, it’s now a full-blown luge track, with banked curves and steep inclines — though the family uses snowtubes instead of luge sleds to plunge down the hill.

This year, it’s faster than ever.

“This one’s faster. That one’s scarier,” Rae told his teenaged visitors, Skye and his brother, Waas, pointing to the two branches of the track.

“Big air bro!” yelled one of the boys as they flew down the track, noses scrunched up and hands gripping tubes as they sailed around corners.

Rae’s sons, 14-year-old Aidan and 15-year-old Devin, are also big fans of the track — pushing their limits to see who can fly highest up the walls — but some of the novelty has worn off, said Rae.

The kids now regard the labour-intensive “family affair” of building up the track as somewhat of a chore, he said.

The family started building this year’s track in November at first snowfall, dumping garbage bins of snow along the bank walls and sending Aidan and Devin down in tubes to smooth out the chute.

Rae, a stand-up paddle board instructor by summer and freelance photographer/graphic designer the rest of the time, spends two hours a day on grooming — the work involves shoveling excess snow and icing up the chute by sprinkling water — for a total of around 150 hours annually.

But it’s worth it.

“I totally enjoy people’s yells of joy when they come down,” said Rae. “Especially someone is going down for their first time — just the look on their face is payment enough for me.”

There’s even an obstacle-course element to the track — a plastic bottle that hangs from a metal pole on an 8-foot high wall tempts ambitious lugers who try to grab it as they shoot around the corner.

“People will destroy their bodies and their careers to try to grab that (bottle),” said Rae.

Only one person has ever been injured on the track — a nurse who emerged from her flipped-over tube with a bloody nose. She insisted she was OK, said Rae.

But Rae does try to mitigate risk. He builds the walls high and encourages sliders to wear helmets. His lawyer wife approves of the set-up, he said.

“I think I broke the hill,” said Skye, laughing as he crashed into a wall.

“Oh man, I almost flew over to the other side,” said Waas, 14.

Before Torontonians with tiny backyards get too envious, Rae admits the track spreads out onto two neighbouring wooded properties, giving his neighbours access to the runs.

Rae said he won’t be renting out the run to outsiders, due to concerns about liability, but he hosts luge parties twice a year to raise money for charities, such as Pancreatic Cancer Canada. He’s raised more than $3,200 over three years.

As for whether he’d trade his bumpy backyard for an ice rink today, Rae’s answer is decisive: no way.

“Skating seems so pedestrian compared to this now,” he said with a smile.

BY THE NUMBERS:

500 feet (152 metres): The entire length of the forked track. For comparison, the world’s tallest roller coaster, Kingda Ka at Six Flags in New Jersey, rises to a height of 456 feet (139 metres).

400: The number of garbage cans-worth of snow Rae has pilled up to create the track this winter.

15-20 seconds: The average time it takes to slide down the track, depending on which point you start.

25 km/h: The top average speed people have been clocked at going down the track.