Just to drop a note of Thanks

Team Saskatchewan – Snow Sculpture

Snow Conditions

A week before the competition Whitehorse had absolutely no snow. In the last week they received enough snowfall to create the blocks. Therefore some of the blocks were only a couple of days old. The day before carving started the blocks were fairly soft. That night the temperature dropped to -30C and stayed that way for the next couple of days. This was actually the lifesaver. The -30C temperatures tightened up the snow to create an excellent carving medium. Since there was little wind to contend with the -30C to soaring -20C temperatures were great to work in. The organization had provided a heated RV on site, but it was mainly utilized to grab a quick coffee and cookie and get right back to carving.

Whitehorse - A Going Concern

The advantage of this small community (approx. 23,000) is that the folks are friendly and give a damn. Kind of reminds one of small town Saskatchewan. Currently their primary source of income is derived from tourism – so they take it seriously. In 2007 Whitehorse is hosting the Canada Winter Games and will be integrating snow carving as a cultural event.

Team Saskatchewan – Snow Sculpture

A Positive Experience

If you would like to experience a positive snow carving event, then go to Whitehorse. The organizers of this event are snow carvers and have succeeded in creating a venue that caters to snow carvers. They go out of their way to make this a positive experience and stress that the snow carvers should enjoy their visit to Whitehorse.

Although there are no monetary prizes for this event, the social, art and camaraderie aspects resulted in a very positive carving experience.

Since the public has access to the site during the entire carving process the public and carvers have an excellent opportunity to interact. This is encouraged at this event.

The carving competition started and ended with a banquet. The initial banquet was hosted by the major of Whitehorse and included local dignitaries, all of the snow carvers and the Rendezvous Queens. Entertainment was provided by a male Japanese drummer/dancer and the Whitehorse Can Can dancers.

Also this event provided ample opportunity to visit with the other carvers during and after the event. The required working hours were very reasonable and manageable.

Meals were provided by local eating establishments. One of the meals included the Yukon Brewery tour (many free samples) and pizza. It was great to be able to get away from the site every day and enjoy the many eating establishments of Whitehorse. Also a number of teams spent time in the hot springs, snowmobiling and dog sledding.

What can I say, we were treated very well.

Snow Sculpture

Oh yes the snow carving. This year we decided to move away from the traditional figurative sculpture and concentrate on an abstract. The original block size was 12 ft. long by 8 ft. wide by 10 ft. high.

Along with trying to create a flowing piece, introduce air and maximize tension, Floyd manages to break off the top half of the block on Saturday with approximately 2 hours left to completion. After undercutting a 5 foot horizontal element it decided to fall off – go figure – think I pushed it a bit?

A few seconds later the remainder of the top half of the sculpture squeaks like a hinge and rotates off the base (taller segment). Ed kicks away from the sculpture and I stand there with my mouth open. Finally this huge segment stops moving and its balancing on a 2 point hinge – no way. One side of he element has been elevated by approximately 18 inches. It hasn’t hit the dirt, it hasn’t crushed into powder and there is no way it should still be standing there. I give the whole section a push and it doesn’t fall over – it’s actually stable. Life is good and it is time for lunch.

As we are laughing all the way to the restaurant we quickly decide that if it is still standing after lunch we can fix it. Ok so we can’t complete it in the next 2 hours, but by 9:00pm that night we are sipping a couple of Yukon Gold and agreed that this dumb luck may have helped us create a better sculpture than was originally designed.

It was still standing as we left Whitehorse.

Team Saskatchewan – Snow Sculpture

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Snow Carving Website References:

Reference the following Whitehorse website for more detailed info: http://ww3.whitehorse.ca/Features/GrandOpenings/Rendezvous/snow/index.html

Also checkout the Team Yukon website. They did a world snow carving tour this year. These guys are seriously into snow carving. http://www.snowcarver.ca/

For more general pictures of the event check out my photo share:

http://photoshare.shaw.ca/view.php?VEID=19469_TdNvlk1141421382makQAe&mesg=1

Floyd Wanner, Team Saskatchewan, March 03, 2006