Jack Frost Festival 2009

So today was the final day of the Jack Frost Festival, held in Charlottetown. This is the 3rd or 4th year that they've done it.
It was really cold out, but the place was so enchanting that I stayed out looking around, fascinated by most of it, for over 3 hours.
I wished Hayden was here today, it really was a kids paradise, and I wanted to play on some of the things.... couldn't by myself - he's a great excuse to dick about :)
Kath would have marvelled at it all too.
Well I can share what I saw here in my blog anyway. I have taken videos and will upload them during the week to come.
I knew it was going to be one of those things you don't get to experience everyday when I walked into the entrance...


A massive wall of snow, with a giant welcome message carved into it was just the start...

I'd been told by the ice sculpting guy that they actually created most of the snow here, using a snow machine.
This stuff has to be jumped up and down on the compact it enough to carve, otherwise it'll just break and fluff away like the stuff I showed you in the 'white outs', that's what snow is like here until the temperature rises... like talc!
And, as we all know, as soon as you scrape up snow to make a snow man, you immediately grab all the mud up with it, creating a dirty brown mess.
Not here...
Another advantage of the created snow is that it has a slight blue hue to it, making the really big snow sculptures look and feel even more magical!
Plus, there just wasn't enough snow :)


There were a ton of people there and I wondered around taking tons of pictures. It was hard to narrow them down to the few that I have here in the post.

One of the highlights was this playground, completely made of snow. A climbing wall, tunnels, slides...

... a really tall bloke...

I really wanted a go on this slide. When I walked around this harbour two weeks ago I saw a huge digger piling up a mountain of snow, at the time I had no idea that it was building this giant slide, one of many. The actual slide (the groove) is made of ice bricks, implanted into the snow hill. I will bring my waterproofs next year and I'll have Hayden with me as an excuse to go on it :)

This tube ride also was very fast...

There were certain events going on throughout the day. At 4:00pm, The Flying Canucks started their show, doing snowboarding and ski ramp jumps and trampolining, to timing and music. It was short, but pretty good. I have some video which I will link to YouTube if you click the image. Check back later in the week when I've done this.
Now to the really cool works of art. There was a competition going on for big snow sculptures. These were big, well over my height.

This was like the snow queen from Narnia...

This was wicked. It was entitled 'Snow Angels'. It's difficult to pick out the amount of detail when everything is so white, but that's the devil riding on top, full on 'rawk' tongue, holding a snow flake. I guess Hell froze over then!

This was carved into one of the big walls....

Surf's up big kahuna!

During the day there were a bunch of guys doing ice sculptures. I spent ages sat there watching them. I'm going to try one next year. I need some tools and a chainsaw :)

I managed to snap this as the guy started. If you look closely, you can see that he has drawn an outline of what he's going to carve. In case you can't see it, it's a wolf howling upward.

This is it about 2 hours later...

He said it was his first ice sculpture.

This bloke did that big face that was carved into the wall above, and was doing something similar here. A woman's face with hair blowing back, some type of mermaid or snow maiden.

High detail on the face an hour or so later

They made this 'crystal' ball out of ice. Earlier in the day it was really clear, but the guy was telling me that as the temperature gets warmer, the ice starts to crack. It didn't feel warm!

It actually looks quite cool however like this.

Surprisingly they have the ice made for them. You can't just leave ice in a block outside over night... oh no. It will freeze in layers and the centre will be cloudy, like an ice cube.

This water is circulated so that the impurities stay at the top. It is frozen from the bottom up, and then the top layer (which is cloudy with impurities) is cut off, leaving a really clear piece of ice to carve.

Amazing what you learn!