Cripple Creek Ice Festival 2018 ~ pt. 1

The Cripple Creek Ice Festival takes place every February for two weekends. What a great way to break up the winter doldrums. Only thing is, it really hasn't been much like winter around here. We have had such extreme temperature swings! Almost Spring-like for a few days, then a storm blows in and brings us a small amount of snow and some frigid temperatures. The last couple years has seen warm temperatures for the Ice Fest and the ice begins melting not long after the first day. But this year was a little different. We had snow arrive on the first day and moderately chilly temperatures continued throughout the first weekend.

The Ice Festival is an interactive ice sculpture event with a different theme every year. The public is encouraged to touch, sit, and enjoy the sculptures carved by the sculpting teams. This year's theme was Renaissance in Ice with five professional ice sculpting teams who turned the downtown area into a medieval wonderland complete with an ice castle, dragon ice slide, carnival games in ice and for the adults a martini ice luge.

The ice was brought in on two semi-trailers over the course of two days- about 180,000 pounds of ice from the Great Lake region of Ohio. That would be 600 blocks of ice each weighing 300 pounds. It was fun watching the process. 

The ice is shrink wrapped for its protection

All manner of items were used to sculpt the ice - axes, chainsaws, blow dryers, kitchen utensils. Whatever gave the carvers the ability to shape the ice.

Next time, we'll take a walk down the street as another storm moves in and we'll view the finished sculptures.