As Wilkes County contractor Jimmy Wheatley carves the earth to make the Devil’s Gap, builders James Cameron and Rodney Maggiacomo oversee the construction of obstacles for Tough Mudder Georgia set for February 11 and 12 at Aonia Pass Motocross Park. The construction team building the 25 obstacles spread over more than 500 acres at Aonia Pass Motocross Park in preparation for the Tough Mudder Georgia event next weekend says that spectators will have an excellent view of most of the course, making the Georgia event one of the best opportunities to view the extreme fitness challenge.

“This is ideal for spectators to watch,” said James Cameron, vice president of Sunscape Builders, whose team is building the course. “You can easily see more than 75 percent of the course just by walking around a little. These big open fields make it very easy to follow your favorite team around the course, and really make Aonia Pass stand out among Tough Mudder courses.”

Cameron and his second- incommand, Rodney Maggiacomo, have only 26 days to build the 25 obstacles and the 11 miles of mud in between them, but they’ve had help from Wilkes County subcontractors to make it possible. “Jimmy and Kenny Wheatley have been monumental in helping make this happen,” Cameron said as Jimmy Wheatley carved 10 four-foot-deep pits exactly eight feet apart for an obstacle called “Devil’s Gap.”

Some of the Tough Mudder obstacles involve hay bales, which Cameron bought from a local source. “Judge Thomas Charping was very helpful in getting us all the hay bales and straw bales we need,” he said. “The ‘King of the Mountain’ obstacle will have 94 round bales stacked about 25 feet high, and the ‘Jumpin’ Bale’ obstacle will have them crossing a field by jumping from bale to bale.”

The bales of straw have a different purpose, he said. “They’ll be set on fire in the ‘Fire Walker’ obstacle for runners to run in between.”

Other obstacles will involve mud dredged from the bottom of the pond at the entrance to Aonia Pass. “It’s that gray, stinky mud that’s even worse than regular mud,” Cameron said with pride. “The ‘Mile of Mud’ is only 300 yards long, but it’s going to be really hard. We try to tweak these at every event to make them better.”

The Tough Mudder Georgia event starts early Saturday, February 11, and runs through Sunday, February 12. At last count, more than 5,300 participants had registered for Saturday and over 1,500 more for Sunday, Tough Mudder organizers say, and there will be thousands of friends and family on hand to cheer them on.

Spectator tickets are available at ToughMudder.com/events/Georgia, priced at $20 until this weekend, or $40 at the gate. Large groups of Mudders will start off in 20-minute intervals, with the last group off at 12:30 p.m. The course should take some four hours to complete.

In only its third year, the Tough Mudder events have exploded in popularity. Some 50,000 people took part in the first year’s extreme challenge events, and with 35 Tough Mudders scheduled for 2012, between 350,000 and 500,000 participants are expected to enter.

With military Special Forces members at the heart of the organization, and in the crowds of runners, Tough Mudder has donated more than $2,600,000 to the Wounded Warrior Project to help veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan recover from their wounds.