“Thomas Jr.’s Training Potty” vs. “The Library.”
Photo by Ruth Dahl
Story published in The Sylva Herald on Feb. 20, 2020
What do you get when you combine skis, racing and bathrooms? Outhouse races. Sixteen teams from all over the southeast built outhouses and raced down the snowy slopes in the 2020 outhouse races at Sapphire Valley Ski Resort.
The only regulations were outhouses had to be five feet tall with toilet paper, one seat and mounted on a pair of skis. Otherwise the teams could be as creative as they wanted. Competitors included the ‘Storm Pooper,’ a Star Wars themed outhouse propelled and driven by people in storm trooper costumes. Another was ‘The Sound of Movements,’ an outhouse based on the musical, “The Sound of Music.” Also, last year’s champion from St. Jude’s Catholic church in Glenville, ‘The drive by confession,’ a cross-topped outhouse fashioned to look like a catholic church.
Racers lined up at the starting line in pairs, two people pushed each outhouse for 30 feet, then the rider relied on gravity to get the outhouse the other 90 feet to the finish line without falling over.
This year’s winner was ‘The Poop Coop,’ built by Lance Black and Chris Alexander from Birmingham, Alabama. Alexander, sporting a yellow chicken suit, piloted the craft which resembled a wooden chicken coop.
“We got second place last year and we went back home and took off the chicken wire and came back this year and won,” Black said.
According to the director of marketing for Sapphire Valley Ski Resort, Linda Foxworth, the outhouse races started 14 years ago as a joke among employees during the slower weeks at the resort.
“Everyone’s gotten really serious about it…now we have a big party in the middle of winter and it’s just good family fun,” Foxworth said.
With more teams competing each year, Foxworth hopes to have 20 teams enter next year adding, “We’d like to have a team from Western compete next year.”
Several hundred people came to watch the 14th annual race, named a ‘Top 20’ event in the region by Southeast Tourism Society. The event took place at 3 p.m. on Saturday Feb. 15, it was free to compete and spectate.
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