Where speeding down a mountain at 60 mph seated on a #10 scoop shovel is only a warm-up.Where the modi?ed division racers are limited only by the quality of junk parts they can scrounge. Where the competitors derriéres are as scarlet as their necks...

In the quarter century or so since the first hordes of deranged-on-the-range crazies began their mad dash on shovels down the finishing face of Angel Fire Resort, wacky incidents have been as common as cactus.

Few captured the spirit of these World Shovel Race Championships more vividly than the instant when Mike Cordova's red modified sled, "Loco Motions," smacked the ice wall at 60-some miles per hour, spiraled skyward and then tumbled to rest at the base of the mountain. Within seconds, the several hundred spectators lining the course broke into heartfelt applause for two reasons: 1) Cordova walked away from the debris unhurt; 2) bartender Doug Hilner continued to pour drinks even though a chunk of wreckage skewered a nearby snow bank, narrowly missing him.

A tragedy averted has inspired more than one great weekend party and, in the brilliant snow peaks of New Mexico, even a bad reason for a party at the 25th anniversary of this novel event is good enough.

"That was a pretty close call," Hilner would say later. "I almost spilled a pitcher of Bloody Marys when I ducked."

Grace under pressure-just one of several examples that epitomized a long and eventful weekend.

Not that spectators or contestants needed an excuse to have fun. As everyone in attendance knew or suspected, the World Shovel Race Championship is one of the funniest, weirdest and coolest events in America. And Angel Fire, located only half an hour's drive from artsy-tartsy Taos, is among the most laid-back and beautiful ski resorts around. It's a can't-miss combination.

No wonder spectators and participants began to filter into Angel Fire days before the event so they could spend their afternoons on the slopes and their evenings eating great food and hanging out at fun places such as Aldo's Cantina or Señor T-Bone's. The little town of Angel Fire was more than ready for visitors. Only days earlier, the chamber of commerce had held its annual Chili Cook-off (the "Most Likely to Cause Plumbing Problems Award" went to The Chili Construction Crew), so locals were full of fire, gassed-up and ready for action.

Who can blame them? Shovel racing is to Angel Fire what auto racing is to Indianapolis and flight is to Kitty Hawk. The sport was created, refined and exported from this small place in the southern Rockies.

Locals say shovel racing was the accidental brain child of Bob Harney with the help of his pal, Tal Neal, way back when the two men were lift operators at a resort just sprouting from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of northern New Mexico.

For some inexplicable reason (unsubstantiated rumors suggest beverages played a major role) Harney and Neal, at the end of their shift, decided to eschew the lift in favor of a faster and more interesting way down the hill. They had no skis, but the big grain shovels they used to scoop snow onto the lift ramps were handy. Harney probably was first to park his butt in the bucket and loosen the tethers. But the result of that first race has been lost to legend, and frankly, no one seems to much care.

It doesn't matter. Shovel racing was born and the sport is sufficiently open minded and plenty strange enough to bear the confusion of dual fatherhood.

For the first few years, the races were known as the Bob Harney Memorial.

Shovel Races.

Then one year Harney memorialized himself-and changed the face and fabric of shovel racing-by converting a tricycle into the first "modified" sled. He replaced the tricycle's rear wheels with a grain scoop and mounted a ski where the front wheel once was. The trike survived its run down the mountain. So did Harney. The town was surprised and also amused. A tricycle on a shovel! What would these creative men think of next?

Lots, it turned out. After Harney's watershed run on the tricycle, designers were limited only by their imaginations, the quality of junk parts they could scrounge and the fact that a shovel had to be used in the design (no more than twelve inches from a driver's rump and touching the snow).

Require westerners to strap a shovel within a foot of their butt, then allow them free creative reign and it's no wonder that things started getting weird. There was a flurry of banging-clanging activity in Angel Fire and surrounding New Mexican villages.

Car top carriers, someone noticed, often survived wrecks that the cars to which they were attached did not, plus they were effectively aerodynamic. It was an attractive combination, and they became a hot commodity among the sled builders.

Fuel pods from fighter jets, certain knowledgeable men realized, are bullet-shaped and built to tough government tolerances. So government surplus fuel pods became the stuff of which racing dreams are made.

Same with phone booths. Same with hoods off snowmobiles and fenders off cars. Same with...well, let's just say that, in Angel Fire, if it was smooth and rounded and strong enough to withstand serious abuse, it was probably coveted-and sometimes taken-by enthusiastic designers.

"I don't know of anyone who actually stole something to get a part for a sled," shovel racing legend, Kermit Brown, told me. "Of course, that's not the sort of thing a man's likely to discuss, is it?"

No indeed.

Brown is a pretty good example of what shovel racing is all about. Even though he didn't win, he's the shovel racer who became a media darling at the previous year's ESPN Winter X Games at Big Bear Lake, California. After all that positive air time, he was considered for a role in a national TV commercial ("nothing ever came of it"), and it was hinted that he might make an excellent character actor on film ("I never heard from those Hollywood people again either").

Too bad for Hollywood but a good thing for Angel Fire and the resort's favorite alternative sport. At 6-4, 280 pounds, Kermit cuts a broad-shouldered, blue collar swath on the ski slopes-particularly when you add a beard, biker shades and a Resistol 7X cattleman's hat. By day, he drives a motor grader for the city of Angel Fire. By night he is a designer and sculptor.

Sort of.

Brown began building shovel sleds nearly 15 years ago. He says the most unusual (and unstable) sled in his experience was a contraption made from a sawhorse with a western saddle atop it. Perhaps his most artistic creation was a chopped-down motorcycle on skis (and shovel) that looked like a Harley but was actually a Hodocka 175. "Pictures of that little darling ended up on the covers of magazines," Brown remembers proudly.

Of late, though, Brown has been concentrating on more traditional, functional designs for his Kerminator Racing Team. Consider, for instance, the sled he produced for the 25th Annual World Championships: it is dragster-shaped, slightly larger than other modified sleds (it has to be to fit Brown), painted a striking shade of Kermit-the-Frog green and has a handsome set of elk horns mounted on the front.

"Elk horns are sort of my trademark," Brown explained, adding, "To build the sled, I used pieces from a Ford pickup truck, an outboard motor, a rototiller and part of a ladder off a lift tower."

If this strange contraption had the misfortune of being dropped from a transport plane during some unlikely transit, one can hardly imagine the confusion the eclectic wreckage would cause to investigators. The best thing about it? The sled cost Brown only $47 to build-not counting beer and labor, of course.

"But the only thing we sled racers try to steal are each other's ideas," he told me. "I'm not going to sit here and tell you that, at night, shovel racers sneak around town half-drunk, trying to peek into each other's garages to see what's cooking. But I'm not going to claim that we don't do it, either. It's a fun sport, but remember: It's a competitive sport, too."

Most casual fans will admit that when they think of shovel racing, they think of the colorful and sometimes weird machines built for the Modified Speed Class and Modified Unique Class. Even so, Production Racers continue to draw deserved attention. A production racer is anyone with enough ginger to fit his or her derriére into a standard Number 10 scoop shovel (usually an Ames Stinger or an Ames Kodiak shovel that has been modified by nothing more than ski wax), and point their respective 'D' handles downhill.

Most casual fans will also admit that it looks easy, even fun and is, in fact, not really much of a sport at all.

But casual fans have never stood at the top of the race course, which is why they don't realize how high, how steep, how frightening the course seems. Gaze downhill and you see the toy chalets of Angel Fire and the Moreno Valley spreading out, catching cloud shadows. Wheeler Peak, New Mexico's tallest, looms large and snow-bright a horizon away.

To the south is the Angel Fire Country Club and Nordic Center. To the north is Eagle Nest Lake, a lucent quarter-moon of ice against the darker floor of the valley.

The course is measured 48 feet wide with walls of ice on each side. The finish line seems almost straight down, 1,000 feet away, and people sitting in bleachers appear tiny, unreal.

It is not unlike peering through the wind screen of a Cessna in a steep dive.

Beyond the finish line is the catch net and 12-foot-high retainer wall that some unlucky racers have hit hard enough to dislodge officials manning the radar gun. It is a thoroughly intimidating setting, but this is the land where once roamed Apaches and assorted badmen-a place where courage is part and parcel of the regional fabric. James Atkins, one of the contestants in the Little Scoops Division (ages 6 to 8) was asked about the sport's fear factor.

Was he scared? "Nope."

Had he ridden a shovel down this huge course before? "Yep."

The first time he tried it, was he scared? "Nope."

Had he ever been hurt while riding? "Nope."

Was shovel racing fun? "Yep."

Men of few words, these shovel racers. When Atkins turned the tables by asking his interviewer if he was going to try riding a shovel down the hill, his interviewer was equally eloquent: "Nope."

Up on the mountain, the real Production Racers were posting speeds in excess of 60 miles per hour, just them and their scoop shovels-a sensation that had to be not unlike serving as a hood ornament aboard a Corvette. Not that every contestant was fast or made it to the bottom of the hill. Mike Verhalen, a 230-pound Texan, became separated from his shovel, chased it down the course, tried to stop the thing but couldn't, and finally overwhelmed it by diving on it.

"Riding a shovel is a killer rush," Verhalen would say later. "Same with running down a hill that steep. Worst thing was, it happened to be one of the few days that I hadn't been drinking, and it's really hard to make yourself tackle a shovel when your head's clear."

First down the course was The Breeze, a black and silver sled driven by Daniel Garcia of Mora, New Mexico. Garcia, who runs a welding shop with his friend and pit crewman, Joe "Pogo" Hernandez, said that he and his team had trained hard for the event by staying up until 1:30 a.m. the night before, drinking Coors Light and chasing women.

"It's very important to keep your team loose," Pogo explained. "Kick back and have a few beers, you seem to go faster."

The Breeze did, indeed go fast. Garcia posted a speed of 74 mph on the first run, and Robert Buvinghausen, second in line in his jade green Cobra III, told his crew, "We've got to go fast, man. We've got to fly!" He did neither. He hit the ice wall early and nearly crashed.

Plainly, the hill was fast, and drivers nervously cracked jokes about rubbing more Spam on their sled runners and confirming that, on this day, at least one of the sleds would break the magic 80 mph barrier. Race car driver Don Adkins summed it up when he said, "It's a possibility. The hill's in good shape."

Adkins, of Holman, New Mexico, proved it on his own first run, turning in a blazing 77 mph.

Later he would confide, "I've driven dragsters 180 miles per hour but they're not as scary as running a shovel racer down that hill. You don't have a lot of control."

One man who seemed to be in complete control was Gale Boles. Winner of the '97 races, Boles was looking good with his Schwarzenegger flattop, hipster goatee and wrap-around shades, and he moved around the hill comfortably, chatting with other racers while handing out business cards that read, "World Champion." Boles seemed a man on a mission, and his first run matched his objective. Like Adkins, his top speed was 77 miles per hour, but his time was microscopically better: 13.801 seconds.

The second round, when Cordova's sled almost skewered the bartender, seemed almost anticlimactic. The happy results were reason enough for the kick-butt awards party at which a band fittingly named "The Colliders" played Elvis, while men in baseball caps mingled cheerfully with pierced-tongue types.

"We need to get this sport into the Olympics," a deservedly wobbly Boles proclaimed upon receiving his first-place check for $1,000. "It's time!"

Well...maybe, but only if the Olympics needs a really first-rate party.