SnowDays festival in Banff brings snow sculptures to the streets

A gallery of large snow sculptures now lines the streets of Banff for the town's flagship winter festival, SnowDays.

The festival in Banff and Lake Louise runs for more than three weeks, between Jan. 17 and Feb. 2, and includes events such as skijoring.

Jennifer Sisson, event manager for Banff and Lake Louise Tourism, says the snow sculptures in Banff were one of the original elements of the festival before it became known as SnowDays.

"The snow sculptures are 10-foot by 10-foot snow blocks that get chiselled and carved into master creations," she said, noting the snow is harvested from Fortress Mountain in Kananaskis, where it is less likely to contain twigs and rocks.

"This year was a bit more of a challenge with the level of cleanliness. Last year, [there] was barely a speck of anything in the snow," Sisson said. "And this year, we are noticing a bit more [debris]. But it's something that our carvers are used to, working with different qualities of snow."

The sculptures can be seen along downtown Banff at Central Park all the way down to Bear Street, Sisson says. In Lake Louise, sculptures are made of ice instead of snow, and are a part of its Ice Magic attraction.

Sisson says this year there are seven snow sculptures on display in Banff made by three teams of two from Alberta and British Columbia, including artists from Russia and the Netherlands. 

The design process begins in the summer, Sisson says, when teams are selected and are given a theme to adhere to. Each team takes about three days to carve each sculpture.

"This year, the theme was 'hidden treasures: soul of Banff and Lake Louise,'" she said. "So, thinking beyond the obvious here in the national park, maybe the hidden pieces that you have to notice when you're present and peaceful and observing things around you."

Sculptors use a range of equipment to carve the snow blocks into art, Sisson says, from power tools and chainsaws to smaller implements like chisels.

Each sculpture has its own signage as well as a QR code that links to more information about the art and its artists, including the original design sketch of the carving.

David Ducharme and Susanne Ruseler are the artists behind a carving of a pika holding a bundle of flowers. A pika is a small, mountain-dwelling mammal that resembles a mouse.

Ducharme has about 20 years of snow sculpting under his belt, while Ruseler has about 15. This is just one of many projects that they have carved as a team.

They approach sculpting first by creating a smaller model to work off of before carving the snow itself.

"It's very interesting to do different materials. Most of the time we do sand sculptures, so it's a change for us as well," Ruseler said.

The snow carving duo says that over this past week Banff experienced a bit of a cold spell, which made conditions ideal for sculpting.

Dawn Detarando and Brian McArthur from Red Deer County, Alta., have been snow sculpting for 25 years.

"[Our] piece is about hiking and walking through nature and being cautious about the mycelium, or the mushrooms, and the wildlife, flora, fauna that we come across," Detarando said.

She adds working outside in the cold is no easy task.

"If it's going to be –25, you have to just be ready to be in that weather all day. Dressing appropriately, making sure you have enough hydration and food to get you through," she said.

McArthur says the scale of the sculpting work is what drew him to projects such as this one.

"It's really fun material to be able to make something this large and this quickly in a way," he said.

"And I like the ephemeralness of it, that you can make something grand and large and then it's gone. You enjoy it and then you move on."

Peter Vogelaar and Dmitri Klimenko's sculpture depicts a boy looking at snow through a magnifying glass.

Vogelaar says visitors who look through the magnifying glass toward the sculpture can see the boy's eye enlarged through the lens.

The pair have known each other for about 20 years and have decades of snow-sculpting experience but only began working together last year, according to Klimenko.

Their process is a bit more fast and loose than their colleagues.

"Some sculptors have models, some exact plans. We were more free shooting it," Vogelaar said.

The carvings are set to be taken down at the end of the festival on Feb. 2.

For more information about SnowDays, visit banfflakelouise.com.