Last night I saw a giant Cossack, a man conducting a symphony on a fish, stared down a Comanche with an arrow at my face, an alien sliding to earth and a matador taking on a bull, and I'm just getting started! All made of a single block of ice. It was the Ice Carving World Championships in Fairbanks and for two hours I walked through a crystal menagerie of frozen art. Imagine those glass blown figurines from the county fair now 10' tall.
Fairbanks has special ice I was told (personally I lost the recipe a few years ago) and so that why the championships are here. The biggest challenge is the weather hitting the 30s or above. On the giant sculptures you could see the effects of heat as tree had broken down and the tip of a menacing sword was missing.
People from all over the world competed here. All the competitors, from China, Russia, Poland, Norway, New Zealand, Portland, donated there time and built an amusement park for kids complete with long slides and cups to twirl in. Where was this when I was a kid? It was Christmas time all over again!
