Ice Park 23 March

On Friday evening we took a weekend break. Dinner was covered by PolarTREC at a lovely Italian restaurant in good company. Then we proceeded to the ice park for an evening stroll in the cold weather to test out our clothing layers. It was about -18F (-23C). I had on Under Armor, flannel lined Carhartt pants and a shell on the bottom with a pair of liner socks and hi-tech socks inside very thick high alpine hiking books. On top I had on Under Armor, a thick polypro, a thick Norwegian knit sweater and a shell jacket. On top I had a hat and turtle fur. Since it was below zero I could feel the hairs of my nose freezing as I breathed in but it didn’t feel that cold at first for two very big reasons: 1) absolutely no wind in Fairbanks (typical), 2) extremely dry desert conditions with very little snow (~ 6 inches total on the ground all winter). If you stand there and start chatting you start to get cold because it feels like a 20 below ice box. Without the wind or the humidity it felt only like near zero on a very calm night in Vermont. I think that is why there are so many large towns up here and they can survive in relative comfort. I am sure that if the wind were to blow, it would be extremely difficult to keep houses here warm enough.



As for the ice park, that was very special (see photos). Each year, Fairbanks puts on an international ice carving exhibition with participants coming in from all over the globe including Russia, Japan, and China. They use ice carved from a nearby quarry pond which produces beautiful high clarity ice. Groups of folks with chainsaws and hand saws carve out many blocks of ice and place them at stations around the park. Then the competition begins and each group spent several days carving the ice into sculptures using chain saws and carving tools. Prizes are awarded and the whole scene is just magical with hundreds of sculptures and even a children’s play area built out of sculpted slides and ice block tunnels. The displays were amazing, some as high as 2-3 stories (30 feet/10 meters), some from one block of ice, some from multiple blocks of ice. At night the sculptures were back or front lit with colored lights. Contrast was added by filling hollowed sections with tightly packed snow (e.g. to emphasize some writing). The displays were beautiful but the cold did soon get to us so we only lasted about 2 hours in the cold given the clothing we had on. We all returned to our rendezvous time 11pm and commented about what we learned that day from our survivor teacher Tuck about "circulation and insulation".

Robert's journal entry.