Freezing temperatures are usually an obstacle for construction — but not for the artisans building the Ice Castles installation in Midway.
“Mother Nature has been our friend this month,” said Ryan Davis, CEO of Ice Castles, the company behind the annual 1-acre walk-through ice-and-light display.
Below-freezing temperatures at night this week have made the ice-making easier, the company said in a statement.
(A.J. Mellor | courtesy of Ice Castles) An artisan places icicles in the framework of the Ice Castles installation in Midway, Utah. The one-acre walk-through ice-and-light show is expected to open to the public in late December.
Crews are growing and harvesting up to 10,000 inches of icicles each day. Those icicles are then placed by hand and sprayed with water to form the framework for the castle’s walls, which can measure as high as 30 feet.
Crews will work some 4,000 staff-hours on this season’s castles, dripping water, shaping it into forms and placing color-changing LED lights. When opened in late December, the display will include slides, tunnels, fountains and crawl spaces — all in ice.
Last year, the Midway Ice Castles had to close barely a month after they opened due to high temperatures.
The Midway location is one of six Ice Castles operated by the Utah-based company in North America this winter. The others are in Lake Geneva, Wis.; Excelsior, Minn.; Lincoln, N.H.; Dillon, Colo.; and Edmonton, Alberta.
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