What’s the trickiest part of carving a snow sculpture? It’s the weather.
“If it’s really, really, really cold and you wait too long to carve [the walls], then it turns into really hard, almost icy snow and it’s harder to work with,” says Courtney McKiel, carver and board member of the Snowking’s Winter Festival in Yellowknife. “And then if it’s too warm, then it tends to kind of like mush off the walls as you’re carving it and not really hold structure very well.”
Photo by Up Here
Otherwise known as “Icepick Polly,” McKiel is just one of many volunteers and snowcarvers who have reimagined this year’s Snow Castle on Great Slave Lake now known as the Snow Buddies Winter Garden. Throughout March the public toured the dinosaur-themed snow garden, complete with slides and a maze, as well as viewed the accompanying snow sculptures outside that were carved by teams of competitors who spent days sawing and shaping the frozen designs in Yellowknife’s chilly wi