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A costumed Cruella de Vil snapped photos Sunday morning at Kincaid Park as skiers wearing oversize papier-mache underwear prepped for the day's races. Each woman on the team wore fake undies around her waist like an inner tube and a beauty-pageant sash: "Miss Granny Panties." "Miss Boxers." "Miss Tighty Whities."
Cruella, played in character by Karla Overturf of Anchorage, was impressed. "Beeeeautiful!" "Fabulous!" Another swarm of skiers, in mosquito costumes and peacock-feather antennae, headed for the trails nearby. "Everyone got their buzzing down?" one asked. "We should just start biting people." The group soon joined a near-record-breaking number of girls and women at the West Anchorage trails for the annual "Alaska Ski for Women" on Sunday. In its 14th year, the combination race-costume party has raised roughly $800,000 for Abused Women's Aid in Crisis Inc. and other charities that seek to stop violence against women and children. The 1,529 registered skiers fell just short of the 2004 record while raising roughly $45,000 in donations and merchandising as of Saturday, organizers said. The "Queens of Green," a group of teachers from the Mat-Su, wore suits made from recycled juice boxes and kids' snack packages, while a pair of 15-year-olds wobbled in a rhinoceros outfit made from a Sears refrigerator box. This year many of the costumes carried a theme, "Alaska, the Next 50 Years." Thus: The Solar Bears, a group of bikini-wearing polar bears. As for the giant undies, team "Intimate Apparel" member Jenna Ellinwood said it's all for the cause. Domestic violence is something that's usually kept in the dark, she said. "We decided to do underwear because it's usually something that's under cover, and today is about getting things out in the open."