The return of the Northport Winter Carnival on Saturday brought hundreds of community members together to enjoy winter festivities at Braman Hill. People had the chance to participate in numerous activities including everything from a broomball tournament and cardboard sled contest, to a chili cook-off and the Braman Blizzard Bolt. Live music was performed by Will Kayuk and the band Local Riff Raff.
About 50 volunteers helped to put on the family-friendly event, with over a dozen sponsors and community supporters all coming together to make the carnival happen. Josh Rutila, one of the carnival organizers, said considering this was their first time back since 2018, everyone involved was very satisfied with the great turnout and weather.
“We’re pretty pleased with the turnout, we have a full parking lot and all of the events had full registrants and it’s only going to grow from here,” Rutila said. “We want it to expand how many vendors we have, how many sponsorships we have... We really want as much of it to be as family oriented as possible.”
A new tradition added this year to the list of activities was the Braman Blizzard Bolt, hosted by Sawyer Scott who puts on the annual Bay to Braman Bolt. Scott typically directs the event, but decided to participate in this year’s winter inaugural race, coming in fourth place. He said he had been toying with the idea of doing a second event that’s just the race to face for some time now, and was excited to jump in and host this one for the carnival.
“So I was actually really happy when Wendy Frank, who works at New Bohemian and was one of the organizers, asked me to host the Braman bolt at the winter carnival…” Scott said. “Also I’ve never been able to compete in the bolt because I’m directing it, so it was really fun to compete.”
There was no shortage of free and delicious food either. The chili cook-off featured more than 20 homemade chili entries in four different categories: vegetarian, traditional, white, and wild game. Norport Lions Club member Allen Noftz volunteered at the group’s hot dog station outside the warming hut, serving up hundreds of hot dogs donated by Tom’s Food Market. Noftz said members were more than happy to help with the carnival.
“We got our grills out of the hangar, the snow was six feet deep, but we had no problem getting the Lions Club to volunteer for this and we’re happy to be part of the community, another wonderful winter event,” Noftz said. “We’re hoping to get back more events… They used to have a poker run with the snowmobiles and they used to have tug of war and the outhouse races.”
Northport resident Jessica Wilson attended the carnival with her kids, who were also volunteers helping to serve chili. Like many others in attendance, Wilson agreed with the sentiment that it was refreshing to see the winter carnival and all the activities with it come back after being gone for so long.
“It’s nice to see the community input and everybody getting back together again,” Wilson said.
Both youth and adults enjoyed a number of winter recreational activities at Saturday’s Northport Winter Carnival. Enterprise photo by Meakalia Previch-Liu
