Fanciful dragons, a hulking moose, graceful giraffes
and Rodin’s Thinker were just a few of the figures gathered in Plymouth
Michigan’s Kellogg Park late this month.
Plymouth’s 27th annual Ice Spectacular,
described as one of the oldest and largest ice carving festivals, hosted an icy
version of The Thinker and a crystalline menagerie of figures created by a cast
of professional ice carvers, chefs, culinary instructors and local high school,
community college and university students. Experiencing the warmth of Plymouth’s
quaint downtown with the frozen scene in the park proved just the antidote for
our case of cabin fever.
The 3-day fest featured over 100 statues carved from
single ice blocks, many of them weighing as much as 330 pounds, as well as more
complex carvings constructed using five to 100 blocks of ice.
The Ice Spectacular can be particularly beautiful at
night, with the structures bathed in colored lights and fewer crowds to
navigate out in the cold night air. We’ve seen the festival late at night
during a few previous years as we returned home after a Plymouth Whalers
Ontario Hockey League game, but this year we decided to make a special trip out
to the Ice Spectacular during the day to see some of the carvers in action.
Much of the ice carving and student competition takes
place during daylight hours. Visiting the event was a different experience for
us, with the sound of buzzing chain saws filling the air and crowds inching
along serpentine paths past the ice structures placed throughout the park.
Complex carvings can take the entire weekend to
create. The Plymouth Ice Spectacular offers visitors the chance to watch the
creation of these icy beauties from the beginning through the end of the
process.
Ice carvers
completed a variety of tasks as we toured the festival on Sunday, the third day
of the event. Some carvers carefully measured blocks of ice. Others lifted the
blocks into place and joined them with other blocks by using a little warm
water to melt the ice and letting it re-freeze to create a bond.
The crowd seemed most fascinated with the carvers
who wielded chain saws, picks and other tools to carve the blocky ice into
beautifully detailed creations.
Plymouth’s Ice Spectacular event initially started
after the son of a local hotel owner attended a similar event in Japan and saw
it as an excellent opportunity to attract visitors during the traditional
post-winter holiday lull in business. With an average annual attendance of
500,000 and as an American Culinary Federation-sanctioned event, the festival
attracts plenty of crowds to the park and to Plymouth’s eateries, stores and
quaint downtown.
Free hand warmers from Grabber proved to be a hot item the day we visited. I appreciated the heat, generated by the warming packets tucked into my mittens, as we walked a few blocks to visit the Plymouth Coffee Bean Company for an Ice Fest Mocha (flavored with raspberry and mint syrups) before bidding adieu to The Thinker and the rest of his frozen friends.
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© Dominique King 2009
Those sculptures look amazing. When I was younger I went to Montreal for my little brother's hockey tournament. They had massive sculptures, they even had a castle. I would have to have to watch them melt.
Posted by: susan | January 28, 2009 at 04:37 PM
Susan-The sculptures were pretty fabulous. The moose was part of a larger grouping that included some evergreens and a large bear.
As cold as the days were that weekend (no more than 20 degrees F during the day), the sunshine created some melting problems on Saturday. The Sunday we were there, the overcast weather didn't do a lot for my photos, but it helped the carvings stay crisply frozen.
Posted by: Dominique King | January 28, 2009 at 09:02 PM