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WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2018 • DETROIT LAKES TRIBUNE
Submitted photos
Sun dogs over the ice-harvesting crew from Spicer, Minn., show that they worked on some of the coldest days of the winter. The freshly-cut building blocks (right) for the ice palace on Little Detroit Lake near the Pavilion.
ICE PALACE WILL BE A WINTER FAIRYLAND By Nathan Bowe nbowe@dlnewspapers.com The ice palace going up on the city beach by the Pavilion is typical Detroit Lakes -- ambitious, audacious and a little bit whimsical. The palace is being built of ice blocks -- weighing hundreds of pounds each -- cut from Little Detroit Lake. The end result will be a colorfully-lit frozen fairyland, with ice sculptures, snow sculptures, an ice slide that looks like it’s coming down a mountainside, and a mystical ruler. “We didn’t want just a palace, but an environment to immerse yourself into,” said Detroit Lakes artist Hans Gilsdorf, who designed the palace. Yes, he said, there are concrete, unromantic plans for building the structure, involving a construction scheme and heavy equipment like cranes and skid steers. Builders will create a strong, safe castle 24 feet tall, 30 feet wide and 60 feet deep. But the rest of the winter wonderland scene is going to involve a fair amount of winging it, of fantasy created by artists and ice carvers. “It’s an organic project,” Gilsdorf said. So organic that “we’ve started the Ignorant Optimists Club,” of people who believe it’s all going to come together just fine, he joked. That optimism includes an invitation to some of the best ice sculptors around to gather in Detroit Lakes and have fun with the project, and to work with students on snow sculptures, he said. There’s a lot of excitement in the air, and “we have a huge outpouring of people volunteering,” for the project, he said, from Detroit Lakes and around the area. They include business owners like Steve Jacobs of Nature’s Design Landscaping of Pelican Rapids. “They handle big landscaping blocks all the time,” Gilsdorf said. And Greg Gilbertson Masonry of Detroit Lakes, who is helping out with the process of making the ice palace walls monolithic. Others are donating time and equipment towards the project. Accessories Unlimited of Lake Park, for example, “made modified ice tongs for us,” Gilsdorf said. Tim Keller with Iceman Industries in St. Paul came through in the clutch when a huge pair of ice tongs were needed -- big enough for a crane to use to lift the big blocks. Those giant ice cubes will be 22-inch wide by 44-inch long blocks, as thick as the lake ice when it’s cut -- likely 18 inches -- and weighing up to 600 pounds, Gilsdorf said. But it’s useless to try to name all the names -- there are too many people involved. “Lots of business sponsors came forward,” to help make the project a reality, said Detroit Lakes Regional Chamber of Commerce President Carrie Johnston. A Spicer, Minn., company has been hired to do the cutting of the ice blocks. “They’ll make sure the blocks come out square and nice,” said Scott Walz of Meadowland Surveying in Detroit Lakes -- one of the
(Above) Hans Gilsdorf’s original rendering of the design for the Ice Palace. This portable conveyor belt (left) pulls the ice blocks, weighing up to 600 pounds each, out of the lake. Just like the old days: (below) Once cut, the ice blocks are shepherded down a channel to the conveyor belt.
project leaders. “We’ll bring them up on pallets on the shore, they’ll be stored in two seperate areas,” he added. The Spicer crew uses old-time ice harvesting equipment from the days when blocks were still cut on Minnesota lakes to cool boxcars, and to cool the “ice boxes” that predated home refrigerators. Thanks to a $16,000 matching grant from Explore Minnesota, organizers have now exceeded their original $55,000 fundraising goal to pay for the project, said Amy Stearns, executive director of Historic Holmes Theatre. “Ours is very ice-focused,” she said of the DL palace. “A professional artist designed it and we wanted it very family-friendly. I’m sure the St. Paul palace will also be very beautiful, but in a different way.” Detroit Lakes planners had been gearing up to provide 24,000 blocks of ice to St. Paul for a record-breaking, 170-foot-tall ice palace on the State Capitol ground as part of St. Paul’s annual Winter Carnival. But St. Paul carnival planners, burned financially in the past, got scared off by the $5 million-plus price tag and canceled plans for the ice palace. They later decided to go with a scaled-back version, but by then it was too late to use ice from Detroit Lake, and they are mostly using ice from Green Lake near Spicer. With a rich history of ice harvesting dating back to the late 1800s, Detroit Lakes has decided to go ahead with its own celebration. And a little bit of ice in the St.Paul castle will come from Detroit lake. “They still want to say they got ice from Detroit Lakes, so we told them we would fill a trailer,” Walz said. Detroit Lakes is seizing the opportunity to showcase its extensive history with the ice harvest, Johnston said. “This is a way to bring that back to people who may not have ever known it existed,” she said. Men who used to work winters on the lake harvesting ice “just light up when you talk about this,” said Walz. About 1,500 blocks will be harvested for the Detroit Lakes ice palace. The work was set for Jan. 11-12 -- the first large-scale effort since commercial ice-cutting ended on Detroit Lake in 1971. The palace is designed to be part of this year’s Polar Fest, with a grand lighting event on Feb. 8. The palace will be washed with colorful floodlights every evening of Polar Fest, set for Feb. 8-19 this year. With the Super Bowl being held in Minnesota this year, a lot of attention will be drawn to the state, and Detroit Lakes hopes to get its 15 minutes of fame. “Ice is beautiful,” Stearns said. “This is a great way to celebrate the winter beauty of this area -- we’re trying to showcase to the rest of the United States and to the world that this is a great place to live.” Once it’s built, don’t waste any time getting down to the beach to see the ice palace during Polar Fest. It will be dismantled for safety reasons the day after the festival ends.