31 Mar Ice Sculptures – Part 1
Already knew when I started this post it would be a two-parter. Have way too many pictures and not enough time to go through them right now, but I wanna stay true to my word and post a couple photos a day while I’m up in Alaska. That handsome devil with his chin resting on a ice block is me! My bud Brian and I walked through the ice festival carvings here in Fairbanks with our DSLRs. It is thee location for this stuff and where the world’s best carvers come to compete. I wouldn’t have believed it myself if I didn’t see it in person. Absolutely amazing ice sculptures, some almost 30 feet tall! Granted we walked through the park after the festival was over and the sculptures had been there for weeks. Another unfortunate issue with the ice is that Fairbanks has been surprisingly warm this last week, with temps rising above freezing in the later afternoon. So the ice has melted a bit and the sculptures lacked the once amazing detail from when first carved. However, one benefit we had going for us was that since the event was over we were able to walk in and around the sculptures that are normally roped off.
You’d better believe I’ll be pushing out a new set of wallpapers for you guys with these ice photos. It’ll be quite the set to own! Pretty amazing ice, right? Yep, and this is weeks after it was completed and warm temps got ahold of it. The below pic is just part of a huge ice setup. It was a Poseidon theme with waves crashing over and carrying warriors out to sea, pretty F’n amazing stuff. Mind you, these waves of ice were 15-20 tall. You can see in the background the back of one such wave packin’ a dude out to sea, poor sucker. Too bad that most of the detail in the soldiers’ faces has melted off, they look more like Skeletor now-a-days.
Of course, what would a good photo outing be without a goofy pic or two? Giant ice balls all over the place, fallen off of sculptures in the melting phase. Naturally a guy will think one thing… yep. I lovingly captioned this photo below “freezing my balls off.” Hey, just feel lucky I didn’t go the boobs route.
It WAS cold, fun, and an experience like non-other I’ve ever come across. If I had to put a number on it, I’d guestimate about 50 ice sculptures, and all truly works of art. So many pics…. a couple more below. I’ll get some more up tomorrow, along with some more storytelling from the day’s journey.
