Lynn Lau
Northern News Services

Inuvik (Feb 11/02) - It was -38 C overnight but at the waterfront park on Boot Lake, about 500 metres from the warm beds of the Finto Motor Inn, 20 people were pitching tents.

That's right -- to sleep in.

Team Canada Kim Csizmazia and Will Gadd bed down in a tent pitched in the playground of the waterfront park on Boot Lake. - Lynn Lau/NNSL photo

It was the competitors in the Fulda Extreme Arctic Challenge, a sort of Arctic Ironman organized by the German tire manufacturer to promote winter tires.

For seven days, the participants from Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands, United Kingdom and Canada drove SUVs from Whitehorse to Tuktoyaktuk. They were accompanied by an entourage of another 40 vehicles and 118 support staff, media, company executives, and a couple of European sports celebrities to boot.

Along the way, competitors stopped to compete in events like dog mushing, ice climbing and snowshoeing to accumulate points toward the prize -- a $5,000 gold nugget. The teams, made up of a male and female competitor, included a ski instructor, heavy-duty mechanic and even a beauty queen -- former Miss United Kingdom, Della Draper.

The Canadian team, a pair of professional ice-climbers from Canmore, Alta., Will Gadd and Kim Csizmazia, tidily beat their competition in most events, finishing first overall Tuesday.

"There's a certain amount of circus atmosphere here, but some of the events are very legitimate," said 34-year-old Gadd during a dinner break in Inuvik Sunday night. "It's a nice surprise to get taken to parts of your own country by a German tire company. It's brilliant."

German event organizer Holger Bergold wasn't mincing words when he explained the purpose of the Fulda Challenge. "Of all the sports activities we do up here, they provide an image of power, keeping the track, surviving the extreme cold -- qualities we want to attach to the Fulda name."

Bergold claimed the event will reach an audience of about 660 million television viewers and readers around the world. "If there wasn't huge awareness, the company wouldn't come here," he said.

This is the second year that Fulda has held the event. The company will likely come back for another year if all goes well, Bergold says.

While Fulda billed the event as "2,000 miles of Arctic Hell," Dennis Zimmermann with Arctic Nature Tours in Inuvik said all the publicity could only help local tourism.

"The Fulda Challenge will ... present our region in a way no advertisement could," Zimmermann said in a news release. The Inuvialuit-owned company co-ordinated activities for the NWT leg of the event.

After the competitors and entourage flew home Tuesday, 20 European travel agents arrived in Tuk to drive back down to Whitehorse, for what is known in the industry as a "familiarization tour."

The travel agents spent three days in the NWT before heading into the Yukon.

"We're hoping that they recognize us as a destination of choice," said Colleen Bruce, the executive director of NWT Arctic Tourism, an industry association helping with the tour.

"It will definitely help with travel agents recognizing the accessibility, letting the international market know that we're easier to get to than what has been perceived in the past."