IceCastles.com
MIDWAY — Many have been awe struck by the beauty and craftsmanship of the Ice Castles in Midway, Utah.
It is a regular winter spectacular and on KVNU’s For the People program on Monday, Ice Castles founder Brent Christensen told us how it started.
“Actually, I moved from California back around 2000 and so kids were still all at home and young, and we’d go out in the yard and play. And snow was kind of new as far as living in a place where there was snow. So, we’d do snow forts and ice rinks and things like that, and just playing around year after year, one year I stumbled upon the method that we currently use to make them, and it kind of went from there,” Christensen explained.
He said it’s been about 12 years since he discovered how to make the ice creations. Christensen admits it is a little bit of a company secret.
“A little bit, but I mean…it’s water and cold temperatures really. I’ll tell you in a nutshell….I’ll be honest sometimes I’ll walk into a site, one of our locations and I’ll feel a little stupefied myself. Because it really is…it does feel impossible when you have sometimes 30 feet of standing water basically.”
They have locations in four other states and they start the process each year in October.
“We start with icicles that we grow intentionally for the purpose of a building material, we fuse them in formations, we spray on them, and that’s just repetitive. So, it starts right on the ground and in some cases, we’ll get up to 40 feet, with arches and bridges and tunnels and things like that. In a nutshell there’s a whole lot that goes into it besides that to make it work just right.”
He said after they get things organized and built, then they wait for cold weather, which sometimes is delayed, although it came early this year in Utah.
More information and ticket details are at IceCastles.com