Frozen Wonders - My visit to the World Ice Art Championships

As I press on to survive the heart of winter here in Alaska, I stumbled upon some old photos on a spare hard drive. I thought it would be fun to share a little about my experience visiting the 2007 World Ice Art Championships.

Many of the pictures aren't of a quality I'd like to share, as I didn't have a decent camera on the trip. But I managed to cut a couple diamonds from the rough with my wife's old point-and-shoot that are worth sharing.

The World Ice Art Championship is the largest ice carving competition in the world, drawing craftsmen from across the globe to Fairbanks, Alaska. Numerous works are on display across the competition grounds, from start to finish.

Unfortunately, I discovered the competition has been cancelled this year. It seems the offices of the organization that runs the competition were destroyed by fire in 2016. The recovery has been difficult for them, and they lost a few big sponsors, but they hope to return in 2019.

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It was March 2007 when we visited. Fairbanks is located in interior Alaska and about a seven hour drive from Anchorage. If the weather's nice the drive offers some amazing scenery, including Denali, the highest peak in North America at 20,310 feet (that's 6,190m for those of you in countries using the superior system of measure).

It was painfully cold, and the Championship judging deadline was near. Some artists were working on the final steps to complete their pieces; it was mostly the larger ones that weren't yet at one-hundred percent.

I wish I had enough quality photos to properly share this experience. There were massive sculptures constructed from multiple blocks of ice with intricate detail. Thankfully, I found an image of one sculpture from that year on wikimedia commons.

The thin pieces of ice between the posts forming the guardrails were crystal clear and perfectly straight.

_{I didn't take this photo, but thankfully someone else attending the 2007 Competition posted this on Wikicommons. Source.}

One of the largest in terms of ground area covered was the frozen Stonehenge. This one didn't have the intricate detail of other sculptures, but was impressive none-the-less.

Some of the best images I managed to get were after the sun had set and colored lights accented some of the sculptures. I love how the round spheres captured the colored lights on this sculpture.

This magnificent sculpture seems to combine a pair of Aesop's Fables: "The Shepherd and the Lion" and "The Lion and the Mouse". It's amazing how fine the details are on the small mice, the branch they stand upon, and the lion's paw.

Around the lion were many more animal themed pieces. I found the mantis particularly impressive, and the green light added the perfect accent. By the way, to give you a slight reference for scale, all these pictures were taken at eye level. Each of these were taller than 6 feet, except the Dall sheep.

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After spending a couple hours admiring the Ice sculptures, we went to Chena Hot Springs. My wife and I had visited previously on a couple occasions, however, this was the first time we rented a room and enjoyed an evening soak in the naturally heated spring.

Fairbanks is known for extreme summer-highs and winter-lows in temperature for the state of Alaska. So to be expected, it was twenty degrees below zero Farenheit while we were there (that's negative thirty Celsius for those of you in countries that haven't walked on the moon). That made the walk around the sculpture competition pretty brutal, so during our soak that night we kept as much of our bodies under the water as possible.

The different in temperature between the water and the air caused a thick steam to rise from the surface of the spring. That, combined with the dark night, meant we could only see about 6 feet away.

As we waded through the calm pool enjoying the warmth, laughing at the mens' beards collecting frost, we couldn't help but notice something. There seemed to be a large number of Japanese men basking in the spring, hiding in various corners or slowly wading through the water like lurking creatures. Really, it was odd. We'd travel to one edge of the spring and a figure would emerge through the thick steam. Turning around, we'd just happen upon another tucked into a corner of the rocks.

When we were finally ready to retire, we ran from the pool to the bath house, laughing as our feet stuck to the frozen ground with each step. Inside, one of the employees shed some light on the plethora of Japanese men in the spring. Apparently, there's an old myth that the Japanese seek to conceive under the aurora borealis, believing it increases fertility and may impart greater wisdom to their children. As it turns out, March is peak aurora season. More than likely this is indeed just a myth; the Japanese seek to simply view the aurora once in their lifetime, holding it as one of nature's greatest splendors.

In the short outdoor walk from the bath house to our rooms, the wet swim shorts we carried froze solid. This provided more laughs, as we set the stiff shorts on the ground, letting them stand as if filled by an invisible person. Away from the steam rising off the hot spring we could see the green ribbons of aurora waving across the sky. I've seen the aurora many times, and this wasn't the most spectacular display, but it was the perfect bookend to a pretty amazing experience.

_{This is similar to the aurora we saw that night. Source.}