Woodbury Winter Fun

Photo: Emily J. Davis

Luge builder Chuck Goetz enjoys the fruits of his labor with a tube ride.

For Woodbury resident Chuck Goetz, the first snowfall of the season means it is time to grab his shovel and get to work—in the backyard. That’s the site of a 30-foot wide, 200-foot long luge, which he designs and builds by hand most every winter.

Inspired by memories of the miniature luge his father built at their Mendota Heights home when he was growing up, Goetz has been building his own luges for more than a decade. In 1998, he and his wife Anita purchased a home in Apple Valley with a hill in the backyard. Sizing up the hill, Goetz thought he could turn it into a luge-type sled run. That winter, his luge-building hobby began.

Nine years later, when the family moved to Woodbury’s Stonemill Farms, they were excited to find a lot with a luge-worthy hill. “It wasn’t really one of the criteria for building the home,” Goetz says, “but we got pretty excited when we saw the size of the hill in the backyard.”

The first year, his children Brandon, now 15, and Camie, now 12, used the hill for sledding. But by 2007, Goetz was ready to try building a luge at their new location. “The kids loved it,” Goetz says, “and that is really the reason I do it—for the kids.”

His daughter Camie says she enjoys racing with her friends to see who is the fastest. And with five lanes, each about six feet wide, the design of the run invites racing. The luge winds down the hill before leveling out across a frozen catch basin. Goetz has even included an exit just before the pond for sledders who crash on the upper part of the track. He’s also mounted lights on his deck to illuminate the track at night.

Brandon says his friends also love using the luge. “They think it is sick (that’s teen-speak for awesome) and wish they had one to use,” he says.

Goetz’s career as a strategic planner has him habitually thinking ahead. “I’m a visionary type of guy,” he says, “so I’m always looking down that hill thinking, ‘What can I do differently?’ “

At the end of the winter in 2009, Goetz added another lane to his single-lane track and promised the neighborhood kids at least three lanes the next winter. Those three lanes became five.

He begins work on the hill in the fall, usually October, by mowing several lanes through the heavy weeds. Once the snow starts falling, Goetz theorizes that the lanes will begin to form as the snow cups into the lanes. “[Last] year, it did not, and we had so much snow that it didn’t matter, because there was plenty of snow to work with,” Goetz says. “The year before, we didn’t have as much snow, so I had to maneuver and manipulate the snow a little bit more.”

A shovel and a snowblower are Goetz’s only tools, but for safety reasons, he uses the snowblower only on the flat areas at the end of the course. The hill requires all hand shoveling. Even so, Goetz doesn’t seem to mind. Nor does he request or expect help. “I just do it for others to enjoy it,” he says. “To me, it’s good exercise too . . . it gives me my solitude.”

The first two weeks after it snows, he says the luge becomes a labor- and time-intensive project, but once the track is formed, it is simply a matter of fine-tuning and filling in damaged walls.

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