Ketchikan at the end of season rains…a lot; and when it’s not raining, it’s trying to rain. So we usually gravitate towards somewhere with some kind of shelter; and preferably something in the way of warm drinks.
In this case, despite being many seasons in Alaska, neither Amras or I had ever been to the Lumberjack Show…which is somewhat strange, as that’s what most people do in Ketchikan, at least once. Somehow though, we’d just never made it.
Our crew ID got us in at the door, and a few minutes wait got us coffee and popcorn. The seats are sheltered, and heated (to a certain extent), so we were out of the elements. The competitors in the show however, were at the mercy of the rain that occasionally came sluicing down as if someone in the clouds was turning on a shower.
The Lumberjack Show is technically a competition, and the lumberjacks who perform in it (lumberjacks, not loggers, as I’ve learned they are not the same thing), are athletes, athletes wielding souped-up power tools in some cases which is rather intimidating. They divide the audience into two teams – one cheers for the Dawson Creek ‘Canadian’ team and the other for the Stuart Mill local ‘American’ team. Ironically I ended up being designated to cheer for the American team – a fact which I tried hard to find amusing! In the spirit of all competition shows of this sort, you cheer for your team and you heckle the other…I tend to get a little too into these things, but our side of the stadium was just not as loud as the other unfortunately.
It’s a good show. It’s a very dangerous show to compete in, being as how they are throwing axes and wielding chainsaws; but it’s not the show itself I really find interesting, but the history behind it. It’s a sport now – who knew Timber Sports was a real thing? I didn’t know this I’m ashamed to say – but it started out as actual loggers honing real skills they would then use in the woods. The events the lumberjacks compete in are based off of those skills. The teams are real too, or at least they used to be – these days the participants all live in town, but when the actual mill camp existed, its rival was the Dawson Creek Mill over on my side of the border.