Despite cold temperatures, activity heats up at Ice Alaska

FAIRBANKS — The whine of chainsaws and beeping of backing-up fork lifts broke the cold silence on Sunday as volunteers continued preparing for the opening of the 2011 World Ice Art Championships, which begin in Fairbanks next week.

The temperature might have been 30 degrees below zero but the grounds at Ice Alaska’s ice park on Phillips Field Road were a beehive of activity.

A team of four Mongolian ice carvers was building a train depot out of ice — complete with benches to sit on — where visitors will be able to hitch a ride on the Winter Wonderland Train, a line of cars pulled by four-wheelers that offers tours of the Ice Park.

Russian carver Vitaly Lednev was chipping away at a sculpture of a large fish in the Kids Park. His thick mustache was iced up but Lednev said the cold temperatures didn’t bother him.

“Not for me,” he said in broken in English when a reporter asked him if it was too cold. “Is it for you?”

Nearby, 80-something Andy O’Grady was behind the controls of a beeping forklift as he maneuvered giant blocks of ice into position.

Just outside, Julianne Anders and her daughter-in-law, Manarae Ventling, were unraveling and stringing uncooperative Christmas lights along the top of a fence near the entrance to the ice park. They were assisted by Ventlings’ two children, 10-year-old Braden Anders, and 7-year-old Brooklyn, who were bundled up and didn’t seem to mind the cold.

“We have to get these up and then light up the Kids Park,” said a hat-less Julianne Anders, who is in charge of lighting.

With only 10 days left before the Ice Park opens and the single-block competition begins, there is still a lot of work to do, said Ice Alaska chairman Dick Brickley.

“We’re cranking,” a busy Brickley said on Sunday. “We’re busy even though it’s 30-something below.”

Sean Majka, who flew in to Fairbanks from Chicago two weeks ago to volunteer, was putting the polish on blocks of a castle tower that is part of the entrance and exit to the park. In Chicago, Majka carves wood and metal Halloween monster sculptures.

“I visited three years ago and said, ‘I have to come back and carve some ice,’” said Majka, explaining why he was shaving ice at 30 below with a smile protruding from his facemask.

Majka is one of approximately 160 carvers from 21 countries who will be entered in the single- and multi-block carving competitions when the monthlong World Ice Art Championships get under way Feb. 22. Majka showed up in Fairbanks without a carving partner but has since found a partner for the single block competition and is tentatively lined up to be a member of the eight-person Chinese team in the multi-block competition.

Most carvers, like Majka and Lednev, who won a gold medal in last year’s multi-block abstract category and have been traveling to Fairbanks to compete for the past 10 years, show up a week or two early to help construct the Kids Park that features an array of slides, animals sculptures, mazes and an ice rink.

When he finished with the castle tower, Majka’s next assignment was the kids park, though he was thinking about taking a break to warm his toes.

“When you stand around a lot, your toes get cold,” he said.

Down at O’Grady Pond, named for Andy O’Grady, a trio of carvers from China were busy building the third of a dozen 100-plus foot slides that will be used for Ice Alaska’s Slide-A-Mile promotion.

Two of the men used ice prongs to lift and drag broken hunks of ice into place for the floor of the slides, piecing them together like a puzzle. Another man used a chainsaw to cut slabs off larger ice chunks for the slides.

This year’s event, the 22nd annual, is the biggest one yet in terms of the number of teams and carvers competing, Brickley said.

A team of four carvers from the Lower 48 will try to set a new world record for the longest ice bar and ice luge, Brickley said. A Top of the World party is scheduled for March 5 to celebrate completion of the sculpture.

“We’ve got a machine coming in to hopefully build ice glasses,” Brickley said, adding no alcohol, only hot chocolate and cold drinks, will be served.

Another new attraction this year will be an ice sauna made by a team of carvers from Finland, Brickley said.

“We just set the ice over there for them,” Brickley said, showing a reporter pictures sent by the Finnish carvers. “It’s going to be a working sauna. It’s going to be awesome.”

Ice Alaska officials still have to harvest about 300 blocks of ice for the event, Brickley said. Carvers will use more than 1,000 blocks of ice this year, he said.

It takes more than 500 volunteers help make the event a reality, and Brickley said new volunteers are always welcome.

“We can always use people who want to put in the time,” he said, “but it’s a lot of hard work.”