Ice Fest 2011

This weekend was the 2nd annual Ice Fest in Alamosa. Huge blocks of ice are set out in several locations on Main Street and are then carved by ice sculptors over the weekend. Last year the theme was Trains and this year the theme is Wildlife. We went in on Saturday morning to watch the process, from start to finish, of the bronco sculpture. It is pretty amazing what they can do with a chain saw and other tools.

At 10:27am, this was just a block of ice, with a pattern of a bucking bronco taped to one side.

Two sculptors, armed with chain saws started to work. It looked dangerous in that they each got awfully close to the others' chain saw blade in the process. One of the sculptors talked with the crowd about some of the tools they use and one comment he made was, "we usually have to modify most of our tools for use on ice...like, remove the safety features". Yikes!! Bill asked him if they still had all their fingers under their gloves and he said, "no"! I don't know if he was kidding.

Here, he is using an iron to heat a portion of the ice so he can add another small block for the tail. Wonder what setting he uses?

Click to watch some video of the artist at work!

They also had to add another block of ice to the top for the ears. Instead of using the iron, they just poured water over it.

They also used chisels, wicked looking disc sanders and rotary die grinders to get all the fine details.

The finishing touch is to take a blow torch to the entire sculpture. This smooths out the edges and makes it crystal clear.

After 2 hours and 22 minutes, here is the finished project at 12:49pm.

There are supposed to be a total of 6 ice sculptures and 3 snow sculptures. Only 2 of the other ice sculptures were completed when we were downtown, the bird and the trout. They were getting ready to start the buffalo after they finished with the bronco. I heard that there will also be a bear. The cool thing (pun intended!) is that Alamosa is typically one of the coldest spots in the nation and these works of art will hang around for a good month or two. We have been having unusually mild temperatures this winter, though, so they did put some insulation around the sculptures on the north side of the street. They add lights to the sculptures for night display and I'm hoping to take my camera in one evening and get some shots of all of the sculptures with the lights.

This is the beginnings of one of the snow sculptures. The artist said that it was originally going to be a penguin on an inter-tube but that he was having a hard time because the snow was so soft. I'll have to get a follow up photo of this as well.

Alamosa is a small town but we do have a lot of little things like this Ice Fest to get the community out to mix and mingle. We really do love living here!