Warm weather forces The Great Ice Show to find own ice, water for sculptures
It might have been cold for the past few days, but the warm weather so far this season has forced the organizers of the The Great Ice Show out of town to start making ice sculptures since the Red River hasn't entirely frozen over yet.
Zhao, who owns Humphrey Inn in Winnipeg, found it hard to believe there would be a problem getting ice in Winnipeg in winter, so they have had to go out to a gravel pit near Birds Hill Provincial Park to get it done.
Armed with chainsaws, a group of 40 ice sculptors brought in from China carved out blocks of a small lagoon on Garven Road Tuesday. With blades a metre-long, the sculptors sawed chunks weighing in at a whopping 250 kilograms each.
The original plan was to cut chunks of ice out of the river and haul them up the bank to The Forks site and then turn the ice into the shape of the Legislative Building and other Manitoba icons, such as polar bears.
"We already have a crew at The Forks waiting for those ice [chunks], so it's not all the people here," Zhao said. "Some people are responsible for cutting ice, some people are back there stacking them together and some people start carving right away."
The sculptors will work for the next two weeks to build the giant exhibition. It is scheduled to open Jan. 15. It will include an ice bar and costs $25 to get in.