Speeding down a snow-covered hill on a sled or toboggan is one way to race through the winter season, but one Fredericton-area resident has kicked it up a notch by building a homemade luge in his backyard.

Ian Black says it all started eight years ago when he began building up a bank of snow so his two children wouldn’t slide into the woods.

“Then I thought, as they were going up that bank I thought, maybe if I turned it a bit they’d go in a different direction and lo and behold it just started expanding that day, the next day, week after week and season after season,” says the Hanwell, N.B. resident.

This year, the entire course loops around more than 90 metres.

“It’s much more fun than sliding down a regular hill because of the speed difference,” says neighbour Jacob Groom.

“It’s more like a luge. It’s like a luge that goes down and a lot of banks than a regular slide,” says Alex Groom.

“It gets you outdoors in the winter, because a lot of people sit indoors and eat too much, so this is great exercise,” says neighbour Ryan Groom.

Black says the speed of the track changes with the weather, especially after a snowfall.

“So that slows it down, but as the kids ride it, it will start to speed up because it starts to get a little bit of glistening to it, so it starts going faster, a little icy if you will,” he says. “We don’t add water to it because we want to keep it safe.”

While the track has been around for eight years, Black says this year is proving to be exceptional.

“The major difference was…I had to wait until starting basically two weeks ago and then when it started to snow, it started to snow, so it made it nice to be able to very quickly put up the main parts,” says Black.

He says the luge is the hit of his neighbourhood, attracting both children and adults.

“It’s not unusual to hear a little quiet knock at the door and it’s one of the neighbour kids saying ‘can we play on your slide?’” says Black.

“A 47, 48-year-old man out at midnight by himself, laughing, giggling, having fun.”

With files from CTV Atlantic's Nick Moore