This is the time of year when folks in Camden, Me., begin thinking about ice. Not the ice on the roads or the ice on the driveway, the slick, hazardous stuff that one must avoid, scrape, salt or clear. But the all-important ice on Hosmer Pond, just south of town, and the 440-foot wooden chute that spills out onto it.

Without a solid sheet of slippery ice on the chute, and the pond, there can be no toboggan races in this seaside community set on the rocky Atlantic coast 190 miles north of Boston. And without local residents squaring off in the annual races, to be staged this winter on the weekend of Feb. 10, what would be the point of the other festivities: the snowplow parade on Main Street, or the fireworks over Penobscot Bay? In Camden, anyway, it would hardly feel like winter. And this is a place where folks revel in that feeling.

Every year since 1991, Camden has staged the U.S. National Toboggan Championships. The name suggests a competition of professional sledders with years of training on a luge. But the races are less Olympics and more winter festival, a reason to gather in the coldest, darkest months of the year and compete on the ice chute, at the foot of the Camden Snow Bowl, the local ski mountain, owned by the town. Anyone with a wooden toboggan meeting specifications can enter the competition. No experience is necessary. Just pay your registration fee and you’re in.

Still, expertise matters. There are gurus of the ice chute, regulars who compete every year. Perhaps more important, there are the residents who know how to build the perfect sled, created from ash, as the native peoples did it long ago. Four hundred teams participate, traveling from down the road or as far away as San Diego for the thrill of the races. More than 5,000 attend, setting up their snowbound tailgates, where mulled wine and beer flow easily, warming frozen spirits and providing liquid courage to the meek.