BEND, Ore. (AP) - The polar bears will not be in a zoo. The vast swath of ice and snow will not be a designated ski trail. And the freezing temperatures will not be fleeting.

As an elite cross-country skier, Zach Violett is accustomed to pain and suffering in sometimes harsh conditions.

But what the Bend resident has planned for this spring is much more than another ski race. It's a test of survival in one of the most remote and exposed corners of the planet.

Violett has been named to the first-ever American team in a race called the Polar Challenge, a 368-mile ski to the magnetic North Pole starting April 8. The race has taken place every year since 2004.

The three-skier U.S. squad will race against teams from around the world in wind chill temperatures dipping to 85 below zero while pulling provision-loaded sleds weighing more than 100 pounds. Skiing 14 to 18 hours per day, competitors are expected to take anywhere from about 10 days to four weeks to finish the race.

Violett, 26, was named to the team after a one-day tryout in Ward, Colo. The entry fee is $45,000 per person, but Polar Challenge Ltd., the England-based group that runs the event, will pay the way for one American team in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the first explorers to reach the geographic North Pole - Americans Robert Peary and Matthew Henson accomplished the feat in 1909.

The race does not go to the geographic North Pole because melting ice and open ocean in that region make it too dangerous.

Joining Violett on the first U.S. team are 28-year-old Ellen Piangerelli of Providence, R.I., and 54-year-old Dell Weingarten of Las Vegas.

Violett races on the cross-country skiing World Cup circuit and is vying to make the U.S. team for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia. But Violett, who has lived in Bend for 2½ years, is perhaps best known in Central Oregon for finishing second the last two years to Marshall Greene in the annual Pole Pedal Paddle multisport race.

Greene also lives in Bend and is Violett's teammate on XC Oregon, a Bend-based elite cross-country ski team.

Violett and Greene received information about the tryouts for the sponsored American Polar Challenge team from an XC teammate and applied to the tryouts by answering questions on an online application. They were invited to try out based on their responses, and the two skiers traveled to Colorado together to vie for a spot on the team.

Some 350 thrill-seekers applied for the tryout, and 37 were selected for the event in which the candidates were split into teams of about 10 and were required to complete a series of tasks, including: navigating a ropes course, building a raft from logs, and completing a 7-mile run while linked by rope (like team members will be during the actual race).

Organizers were not necessarily looking for the strongest skiers or the most physically fit prospects.

Race director Tony Martin told reporters they looked for character, personality, motivation, focus and a sense of humor.

"They named the team purely on dynamic," Violett explains. "They wanted three people that would get along, that would not kill each other if stuck in a tent for three weeks."

Violett was on the same team as Piangerelli during the tryout, but he had never met Weingarten.

The Polar Challenge is open to anybody willing to pay the $45,000 entry fee, which includes all necessary gear and Arctic training sessions in Norway.

The event begins in Resolute, Canada, from where teams will make a six-day expedition to the starting point. After the start, skiers will come to a checkpoint at the 100- and 200-mile marks. There, they will have access to supplies flown in by airplane, and to doctors. After the second checkpoint, teams will make their way to the 1996 position of the magnetic North Pole, then travel another 16 miles to the finish at an airstrip. Finishing racers will be flown out of the frozen environment immediately upon concluding the race.

The skiers will be linked and will follow the established route via GPS, according to Violett. Contestants will have tracking devices secured in their clothing, allowing race organizers to know the precise location of each competitor. Skiers also much check in twice per day with race officials via satellite phone.

Racers carry all their gear on sleds, including food, and gas with which to start a fire to melt ice for drinking water.

"They say you'll spend two hours every day melting ice to drink water," Violett says. "There's a lot of factors like that that will be difficult."

Perhaps the scariest factor is the prospect of meeting polar bears. Violett says race officials told him: "It's not if you see a polar bear, it's when."

Participants in the Polar Challenge are required to carry a loaded 12-gauge shotgun at all times during the race, in case of a polar bear attack.

Violett previously lived in Alaska, where many grizzly bears roam. But grizzlies are more accustomed to humans than polar bears are.

"You're in an area where the only time bears see humans is during this race," Violett says. "They're the top of the food chain. (Race officials) say they're completely unpredictable. They've never seen humans ... you don't know what they'll do. I am very nervous about that."

More predictable are the frigid temperatures, which can reach 50 degrees below zero and 85 below with the wind chill. At that point, Violett says, any exposed skin is at risk of frostbite.

Violett is confident that race officials will provide the best expedition gear and clothing.

"But camping, setting up a tent, and sleeping in those temperatures is going to take some getting used to," he says. "I'll be trying to go out at night and sleep at Mount Bachelor in a snow tent, but the temperatures aren't going to be the same. It's going to be really hard to train for that."

The 5-foot-11-inch Violett, a fit 170 pounds with just 6 percent body fat, says he was urged by race officials to gain 10 pounds of fat. They fear his body fat is too low to withstand the extreme conditions.

Violett says he might make ice cream a more regular part of his diet.

In February, participating teams will meet in northern Norway to undergo Arctic survival training.

But Violett hopes to meet with teammates Piangerelli and Weingarten (and the two alternates for the team) once a month to practice winter camping and skiing.

Violett says despite all the challenges, he is confident that the first American team in the Polar Challenge can finish the race within its goal of two weeks, and he holds out hope of breaking the event record of eight days. But he knows that just finishing the race and reaching the North Pole would be a monumental achievement.

"One of the guys was saying that more people go to Mount Everest in a year than have ever been to the North Pole," Violett says. "It's this really, really rare opportunity.

"And if I can do this, I can probably do anything."

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On the Net:

Polar Challenge: http://www.polar-challenge.com/