Perhaps you remember one of Charlie Wasley’s 6 career goals or 222 career penalty minutes with the Golden Gophers in the early-to-mid 1990s and have wondered, “Hey, whatever happened to that guy.” Maybe you were a huge fan of the Minnesota Blue Ox in 1999 and saw the Edina native working his magic in the roller hockey world. Whatever the case, we are here to tell you that Wasley is doing just fine. He lives in Savage and works for Lifetime Fitness. But that’s not all. In about two weeks Wasley, 33, leaves for Quebec, where he will compete in Red Bull Crashed Ice, described thusly by the good folks who put it together: Red Bull Crashed Ice is a combination of downhill skating, hockey and boardercross that will challenge 100 competitors in an all-out battle to the finish.  They’ll need to navigate a one-of-a-kind urban ice track that snakes 1500+ feet through Old Quebec’s stunning landscape and is riddled with steep descents, hairpin turns, an ice stairway and the other three competitors on the course at a time at speeds of over 50 km/hr.
That sounds crazy. So we had a few questions for Charlie.

RandBall: Red Bull Crashed Ice is a combination of downhill
skating, hockey and boardercross. Now, I don’t even know what one of those things is, but it sounds ridiculously dangerous. What is your take on it?

Charlie Wasley: That’s accurate.

RB: How did you get involved with it?

CW: Six years ago, I got a random e-mail. They were having one of these events up in Duluth. Like you, probably, I was looking at it like, “What the hell is this?” Being in the event business, I contacted them. They said it was free, send in your resume. I was blown away by the amount of production. They basically iced down Spirit Mountain. It was like a backyard ice rink your dad would flood for you. It was crazy. They didn’t have the best ice, and you didn’t really get any practice runs. The first time trial was the first time we’d ever gone down it. Guys were just trying not to kill themselves. … I went to Duluth the first two years up there. I finished fourth overall the first year. To be honest a lot of it is just dumb luck. There are jumps and turns, many opportunities for guys who have no skill to wipe out and fall down. The first year they did it, they didn’t know what they had. They brought in snowboarders and skiers. I was getting dressed next to this guy … the world’s fastest downhill inline skater from Austria. The skill level at the start was pretty diverse. Now, when you go to these things, the sheet of ice is absolutely amazing. They have tubing that refrigerates ice. It’s gotten a lot more competitive. There’s experience there. In Quebec, they take 100 people, and 64 of them qualify for the finals. I hope that I make that top 64. That’s how competitive it’s gotten.

RB: How do you practice? Did you construct a 1,500-foot urban ice track simulator in your back yard?

CW: I go out to local parks … practice doing starts. The key is the hole-shot, getting in front of people, because once you get in front you control the line, just like any other snow sport.

RB: Is it almost all downhill?

CW: In Prague, there was a three-story drop, and then a jump. In Quebec two years ago, there was a steep downhill, then a sharp turn, and near the end they basically iced down some steps. They create them out of plywood, and it’s iced down. You’re hitting them and gliding, hitting them and gliding.

RB: What kind of padding do you wear?

CW: They require full hockey equipment. I typically wear my roller-hockey equipment. … I pulled it out from the Blue Ox days. At least I got something out of the deal there [laughs]. It was fun to be a part of that team. For me, I had already retired from hockey. I was the only one on the team with a full-time job outside of hockey. Guys were [complaining] because we weren’t getting paid, and I felt bad for them.

RB: You won the Most Determined Player Award with the Gophers in 1995-96. I have to ask: The mid-90s Gophers: How awesome were they?

CW: We had some good teams. Bonin, Crowley. Craig Johnson, Darby Hendrickson. It was weird, we never had the first-round draft pick, like you see now. It was pretty unique in that it was all Minnesota guys. It was a fun program to be a part of, and I still bleed Maroon and Gold.

RB: If you could synthesize the power of hockey hair and turn it into energy, those mid-90s teams would have been something special, wouldn’t they?

CW: I think we were right on the edge where hockey hair was cool, and it kind of went out of style. Not too many guys are sporting the mullet anymore. It’s OK if you call it hockey hair, I guess. In high school, I had the super mullet going.

RB: We only have two pictures of you that I could find in our Star Tribune archives, and both of them are of you cross-checking someone in front of the net. Was that kind of your go-to move?

CW: [Laughing] I actually thought you were going to say something like that. My agent told me out of college that I was a ‘tweener’. I didn’t do anything necessarily great, but one thing I always had was my aggressive side. I was definitely a gritty player. I was over at my parents’ house just this last week, and my mom pulled out everything from my entire career. I have a picture back when we played BU. I had Shawn Bates, he [eventually] had a pretty good NHL career, and I have him in a headlock, and he’s three feet in the air completely horizontal. The guy in the background’s eyes are bugged out. … That was my style. I didn’t put up with a whole lot of crap.

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