Winter is well underway, and there is no stopping either the snow or the cold. So instead of throwing on an extra pair of wool socks and curling up next to the fire, throw on some wool socks and head outside.

Forget about skiing and snowboarding this year and find some inspiration to try out a new winter activity. Here are five winter activities you've never heard of before.

Yukigassen

Everyone who has seen snow has thrown at least one snowball in their life. But did you know that Japan has taken it upon itself to create snowball-fight leagues? The International Alliance of Sports Yukigassen is the governing body of these snowball fight leagues and has been so since 2013.

In short, Yukigassen is made up of two seven-person teams whose goal it is to capture the opposing team's flag. To get members of the other team out, players use snowballs to eliminate their opponents. Each team has 90 snowballs total per set, and the first team to win two sets wins the match.

Wok racing

Having versatile cookware is always a good way to save money, but it's doubtful that using one of your pieces of cookware has occurred to you (at least while you were awake, anyway). Versatile cookware has become means of sliding down a bobsled track at over 65 mph.

What started off as a stunt for German TV has now turned into a dangerous race that takes place down a bobsled track. The sport of wok racing has yet to have found a place in the Winter Olympics, but the man who created wok racing, German comedian Stefan Raab, doesn't see much of a difference from snowboarding and wok racing. "Everyone was laughing at (snowboarders) and now it's in the Olympics," Raab said to Adam Cohen of The Wall Street Journal.

He may have a point there. Curling is an Olympic sport, so why not woksledding?

Ballet skiing

Have you ever wanted to see figure skating on skis? Combining the grace of a figure skater and the sometimes awkward and inconvenient skis, ballet skiing takes talent to a completely different level.

Acroski, as it was once called, was featured in the 1988 and 1992 Winter Olympics as a demonstration sport (a trial run to see if it would make the cut as a full-time Winter Olympic sport), but was dropped by the IOC, according to an article by Slate.

And it's a crying shame they did.

Shovel racing

Many people have opted to rig their riding lawnmowers with snow plows and have left their old snow shovels to rust and ruin. That doesn't make snow shovels unusable, though. Every year, snow shovels are lifted from the garage and taken to New Mexico to be sat on and used as a makeshift sled in the World Championship Shovel Races.

Racing divisions range from the Little Scoops division (6 to 9 years old) to the Masters division, where some racers have hit 70 mph on their repurposed garden tools.

Skijoring

Starting hundreds of years ago as a way to get from point A to point B in the tundras of Scandinavian countries, skijoring was created mostly for practical reasons. But what once started as a means for transportation, skijoring was wrangled by the Nordic Spirit of Competition and became an organized sport.

Skijoring is a winter equestrian sport that consists of strapping skis to your feet and then being pulled by a horse over a snowy track littered with jumps and slalom gates.

According to the North American Ski Joring Association, races have been held in various snowy regions of the North American continent for over 15 years. Some skijorers have westernized the sport by replacing horses with motorcycles.

Winter activities are notorious for being quite dangerous, and these five activities don't help out that fame, but if you do happen to get injured and need a personal injury lawyer, give Robert J. DeBry a call.

Related topics