WATCH ABOVE: Seven-thousand Edmontonians will slip and slide down this massive waterslide this weekend. Our cameraman Craig Ryan was one of them.
EDMONTON — Grierson Hill was covered by a huge 1,000-foot slip-and-slide Saturday as participants got wet and wild.
The 305-metre long waterslide is part of a travelling event called Slide the City. The event tours across the U.S. and Canada, holding water parties featuring ‘the biggest slip-and-slide ever to hit asphalt.’
And, stretching the length of three football fields, it’s quite a ride.
“They’ll be going pretty fast,” said Scott Ward, the event director. “It’s a good hill. It’s a good slope.”
The two-day event was sold out. A total of 7,000 riders will experience the slide over the course of the weekend.
“It seemed like it was going to be a beautiful day, looked like a lot of fun, something that doesn’t happen very often, kind of a nice thing to do with the family,” said Chad Gaske, who was there with his son and daughter.
Working in partnership with EPCOR and other local sponsors, the City of Edmonton was asking everyone to embrace their inner child and test it out Saturday and Sunday.
“It was a childhood dream of a bunch of kids that loved slip-and-slides as kids and grew up with them and now it’s a giant slip-and-slide,” explained Ward.
READ MORE: Massive slip-and-slide coming to Edmonton
Some local media got a chance to try out the slide early Saturday morning before it opened to the public at 10 a.m.
“Under the slide is one inch of really thick foam and then the inflatable slide,” said Ward. “The bottom is not inflatable, just the bumpers on the side. It’s 24-feet wide. There’s three lanes: a solo lane, a group lane, and a kids’ lane.”
Ryann Bradley was able to get a good look at all the action from the Global 1 helicopter Saturday morning.
“This water will come from our Rossdale treatment plant, just down in the River Valley,” said EPCOR’s John Elford. “It’s diverted from the river, we treat it, and it will be sourced from that fire hydrant just at the top of the hill, and it makes its way down the slide. And once it’s passed through the slide we work with Slide the City and make sure it’s safely captured and treated so it can be safely returned to the river.”
“The slide will use about 300,000 litres of water which sounds like a lot but it’s actually about one-third of the amount a typical golf course uses for watering in a given day,” explained Elford.
If you have any photos of the event you’d like to share with us, please email edmontonphotos@globalnews.ca.
Since the Slide the City event was sold out, only those riders with enough foresight to pre-register were able to try out the slide. Slide the City host events in cities all over North America, in places like Edmonton and Halifax and as far away as the Hawaiian Islands.
For the Edmonton event, the group partnered with the charity Spinal Cord Injury Alberta. A portion of the proceeds will go to the charity.
“People will be walking away having a great time, celebrating the City of Edmonton,” said Elford.
RAW: Our cameraman Craig Ryan took a slide down a massive slip-and-slide on Edmonton’s Grierson Hill and wore a GoPro camera. Here’s a look.
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