The Free Press, Mankato, MN

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Festival events

Here are the upcoming events this week for the Waseca Sleigh & Cutter Festival:
Monday: Building snow piles for sculpting downtown
Tuesday: Snow sculpting begins
Wednesday: Old-fashioned ice harvest on Clear Lake from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Friday: Children’s coloring contest, dinner and dance at Waseca VFW, final day of snow sculpting.
Saturday: Parade downtown at 1 p.m., Cannon Old West Society performance, Kruger Memorial snowmobile drag racing on Clear Lake, curling event and bonspiel on the lake.
Sunday, Feb. 13: Kruger Memorial Vintage Snowmobile Race and Ride starts at 11 a.m. on Clear Lake.

Related Photos

  • John “Woody” Underwood decided to go with a cannon ball during the inaugural Polar Ice Plunge during the Waseca Sleigh & Cutter Festival Saturday. Joelle Pipal

    Plunge

February 6, 2010

Sleigh & Cutter kicks off with a plunge in Waseca

Polar Ice Plunge likely to return to growing festival

By Dan Nienaber The Free Press

WASECA — An embarrassing slip on the ice has somehow evolved into a breathtaking way to plunge right into the annual Waseca Sleigh & Cutter Festival.

The way John Pribble describes how that happened sounds like it could be similar to the origins of polar plunging in general. For those who don’t know, a polar plunge is the somewhat deranged tradition of cutting a hole in a frozen lake, then jumping into the frigid water ... for fun.

Pribble also organizes the festival’s annual ice harvest on Clear Lake. While preparing for that last year, he slipped about halfway into the water while removing a big chunk of ice.

“The guys were all laughing at me,” Pribble said. “So I told them, ‘You know, I’m going in at the end of the day.’ They didn’t believe me.

“So when we were done, I hopped on top of an ice block and rode it back into the hole.”

While enjoying a cold one at a local establishment, he told the story to Ken Borgmann, Sleigh & Cutter organizer.

“He said, ‘You might be onto something,’” Pribble said.

On Saturday morning 18 early arrivers and several more stragglers participated in the inaugural Polar Ice Plunge on Clear Lake. The event raised money for Dream Catchers, an organization that grants wishes to seriously ill children.

The water was only about 4 feet deep. A large warming house was set up about 15 strides away from the hole and the lakeside Boat House Bar and Grill was only about a 100-yard dash away across the snow-covered ice.

Sam Schaper, a senior at Waseca High School, wasn’t planning on going in Saturday morning. He was just a spectator.

“When I got here, all my friends were here,” he said. “So I decided I was going in. It was breathtaking. I tried to get up the ladder as quick as I could.”

He said he will be back next year.

Borgmann said the plunge is a good way to start out the growing event, which now stretches across three weekends in February. A survey completed about five years ago showed the Sleigh & Cutter Festival brought about 10,000 visitors to the city. He estimated that number has grown about 30 percent with events that have been added or expanded since then.

“We’re really excited about how things are starting out this year,” Borgmann said. “We already have 60 units for the parade next weekend, and we usually get 20 or 30 more signed up the day of the parade.”

Pribble said his plan is to bring the plunge back next year. He’s hoping it will grow as word spreads.

“It’s kind of like a right of passage,” he said. “It’s on the scale of a parachute jump or a bungee jump. You get the bragging rights of saying you did it, and what could be better than doing it for charity.”

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