Curlers hit the frozen Red River in Winnipeg's annual outdoor bonspiel for charity

Scores of curlers are hurrying hard on the Red River this weekend in an annual outdoor curling event in Winnipeg.

This year, about 40 teams are playing in the Ironman Outdoor Curling Bonspiel in the city's Fort Rouge area near Churchill High School.

Winnipegger Garth Mihalick has played more than a dozen times in the annual event, now in its 21st year.

"It's a lot of fun," Mihalick said on Saturday. "It's about Mother Nature, maximizing everything that you can do and having fun with it instead of sitting inside."

The bonspiel falls on the first full weekend of February every year — which means it's coinciding with this year's Scotties Tournament of Hearts and the 2022 Beijing Olympic Games.

It's also a fundraiser for the Heart and Stroke Foundation and Hope Worldwide Canada. Over the years, the bonspiel has raised more than $200,000 for charity, event spokesperson Lynne Roy says.

It takes about two weeks for organizers to prepare the river for the event, clearing snow and making curling ice sheets, she says.

"It's outdoors," Roy said."It's a nice event to have in the middle of winter. It's not often that we get that, and it encourages people to be active outside."

That's exactly what Karl Shewchuk and Taylor Henderson say brought them out for the new experience: for Shewchuk, curling outside, and for Henderson, playing the sport at all.

"This is the most Canadian thing I could think of doing today," Shewchuk said.

Glen Henderson, who's participated in the even for five years and brought home gold twice, says the unpredictability of curling outdoors means anyone has a shot at taking the top spot.

"The fact that there's so much snow and the ice is a bit rough — it equalizes it for everyone," he said. "So you can have so