Totally tubular It’s cool runnings for tubing enthusiasts at Hermon Mountain

Wintertime … and the tubing is easy. Even if the weather isn’t. On Saturday night at Hermon Mountain, the sky couldn’t decide if it wanted to rain or sleet. But that didn’t stop about 100 people from zipping down the icy chutes in the ski area’s tubing park. Old and young, singles and couples, brave and timid – they all headed to the top of the hill in hopes of a perfect ride. The lucky ones made it over a tall snowbank meant to stop the inner tubes and got another 100 yards of sledding fun.

“You should see some of the antics they do to get over [the hump],” Bill Whitcomb, the ski area’s proprietor, said last week. “It’s pretty funny. We had a young fella run and try to jump onto his tube and he jumped right over it.”

The boy scraped his face on the snow, but that didn’t stop him.

“The crazy part was, he got right back up and tried to do it again.”

Tubing, which entails riding a canvas-covered inner tube down a slick slope and taking a tow lift back up the hill, is new to Hermon Mountain this year. Whitcomb said Hermon was “doggone close” to the last ski area in the state to add a tubing park, but the response has been overwhelming, especially among people who don’t ski or snowboard.

“Everyone can do it,” said Bernie Thayer, 31, of Hermon. “I don’t ski, but I can do this.”

Thayer is a regular – he went tubing three times last week, and he often brings his child and his girlfriend’s two children along with him. On Saturday night, it was a family affair – Thayer was there, as was his sister-in-law, Jennifer Thayer (who flipped her tube the last time she went), his girlfriend, Tami Watson, and their friend Jeff Shorey, a first-time tuber.

“It’s fun,” Bernie Thayer said. “The kids enjoy it, adults enjoy it, everyone enjoys it.”

It doesn’t look like much from the bottom of the hill, but it seems a lot steeper once you get to the top. And then there are the bumps that pitch you into the air midride (note to the uninitiated: don’t sit all the way down in the tube or you’ll end up with a bruised bottom). It’s a wild ride, even on the slower of the two runs.

“You feel like you’re going 100, which is the draw,” Whitcomb said. “Everyone loved sledding when they were kids. This is just much more controlled and you don’t have to walk uphill.”

While the tubing park is overrun by children on the weekend days, adults made up most of the crowd on Saturday night.

“I think it’s a blast,” said Kristen Allen, 22, of Bangor, who went tubing for the first time Saturday night with her boyfriend, Adam Lazore, 24, of Bangor. “You get a lift up, too.”

For Justin Bragg, a 16-year-old from Hermon, tubing is part of his daily routine. He tries to go to the mountain every day, except when he has homework. He knows the whole staff by name – and they know him, too.

“I’ve got a nickname,” Bragg said. “They call me Tubin’ McDoobin.”

His favorite part about tubing is “going real fast and being recognized as the greatest tuber in the sport.” He doesn’t mind dropping $10 a day on a lift ticket, because he’s devoted to the park.

“I just want to contribute all I can,” Bragg said. “It’s definitely a great family fun place for all.”

Last Saturday night, as a light drizzle turned to stinging sleet, he and a friend were the last people left in the lift line.

“Let’s crank it, Robby,” he said to the lift operator, tossing him the tube’s tow rope. Robby Jandreau attached it to a metal hook, and as the lift pulled him up the icy slope, Bragg called out, “Tubin’ McDoobin my friend, Tubin’ McDoobin.”

Hermon Mountain’s tubing park is open Wednesday-Sunday. Tickets cost $10 for a half-day. For hours or information, call 848-5192.