Engineering students brace the cold to race concrete sleds in London, Ont.

Hundreds of engineering students braced the bone-chilling cold over the weekend to race concrete sleds down a hill in London, Ont.

As part of the annual Great Northern Concrete Toboggan Race, teams from about 20 universities across the country design and construct their own toboggans to send down a hill.

This year, the students gathered Saturday for the race at Boler Mountain. The last time a race was held at the mountain, located roughly two hours southwest of Toronto, was over a decade ago.

Owen Kirk, captain of the UBC Okanagan team, said it was a thrill to be part of the race. His 22-person team won the top prize of the year — the King of the Hill award.

“I love the competition, I love this spirit,” Kirk said. “It’s a lot of anticipation building up to it because, you know, you’ve spent the last 10 or 11 months designing and building this thing that you’re really hoping will make it down the hill.”

Kirk, who has taken part in the competition in previous years, said it’s always satisfying to see the toboggan take off after its first push, picking up momentum and finally making it down the hill.

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Each toboggan has concrete sliding surfaces, a safety roll cage and a mechanical steering and braking system and must weigh less than about 160 kilograms.

The game is divided into three parts — a drag race to judge for speed, a slalom race to judge the steering of the toboggan and a final race of winners from those brackets to determine the King of the Hill.

Abigail Young, captain of Western University’s team, which made it to the quarterfinals of the King of the Hill race, said her favourite part about it all was the camaraderie among the different teams.

Young said at one point, teams were even sharing their tools to help each other. One of her team’s welders stepped in to help another team so their toboggan could make it down the hill.

“When they won, it felt like you won, so overall everyone seemed like a winner, which was really fun,” Young said.

The prize for each of the awards will be announced by the corporate sponsor later, the GNCT rule book says.

“Winning King of the Hill for the first time at UBCO was such a joy and a great way to cap off my engineering degree,” Kirk said with a smile on his face.