Professional ice carvers from around the globe come to Fairbanks every winter to show off their talents at the World Ice Art Championships.
This year is no exception – a snowy forest path leads you past whimsical, grotesque, and often humongous sculptures — a bus-sized spider monster, rats with swords, three large scrolls inscribed with the Bill of Rights.
But the newest installations were made by kids. For the annual youth competition, eight teams of them spent their spring break carving ice sculptures.
On a frigid Thursday morning, right before judgment day, the kids were at their workstations as the earliest rays of sun bent through the glassy surfaces of their projects. They were hard at work, hunched over their blocks of ice with electric and acoustic hand tools.
Instructor Mark Chapin said it was a tough but rewarding week for the kids. They spent the week bundled up against record cold, but Chapin said the real challenge was learning to work as a team.
"You find a friend or a partner that you work well with, and that really helps you work through the difficult times," he said. "We actually got a late start — we came in, it was about 34 degrees below zero. And we said, at 10 a.m., you're welcome to go outside. We can wait for a little bit to get warm."
He said this year's extreme cold has made it harder to sculpt ice — even for world champions. The cold disrupts a technique called "fusing," which is when you glue two pieces of ice together with water.
"To get a good fuse at minus-40 is very hard," Chapin said. He gestured at a sculpture of a woman with missing arms — one of them laid in the snow nearby. "As you can see, some pieces have fallen off, and that's just because the water and ice just don't freeze as well when it's very cold, so the seam is weak."
But Chapin said the competition produced the biggest collection of finished youth projects they've had in years.
At the end of the week, the projects are ready to be looked over by a panel of judges. The teams gather on a stage made of — what else? — ice.
The shivering participants lined up to receive certificates ranking their sculptures. And finally, the winning sculpture was announced: Salmon Run by Fairbanks teens Liz and Eve Hansen.
The sisters had sketched out their idea on a pizza box during a family movie night: a king salmon head with a humanoid bottom half, legs playfully kicking up in the air.
"It's like a reverse mermaid," Liz said.
"We decided to do salmon because, like, Alaska and stuff," Eve said.
It was 13-year-old Liz's first rodeo, but 16-year-old Eve competed last year. They said their secret was good communication and teamwork. Even through the mishaps.
"The foot fell off, and the leg thingy that kicks up," Eve said. "It was funky."
"She marked it wrong," Liz said.
"Yeah, I marked it wrong. But we fixed it so it was okay," Eve said.
Their mom, Amanda Hansen, still hadn't seen the sculpture. But she'd been eating up her daughters' daily updates.
"Taking my mom hat off — I'm still, like, I know you're gonna win because it's creative," she said. "It's Alaska-related, it's hilarious, and it's whimsical. It has to at least get top three."
Eve and Liz led her down into the glade where all the kids' sculptures were on display – a penguin, a goldfish leaping out of a bowl, a towering Eye of Sauron – all lit up from beneath with colorful LED lights.
Amanda dabbed at her eyes with her glove, unsure if the tears would really start flowing. Finally, in front of the winning sculpture, she burst into cheers instead, pulling her daughters into a big hug.
You can see the ice sculptures yourself until the festival closes on March 31. And with many more cold days in the forecast, they're likely to stay mostly unmelted until then.
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