Hi Steemians!
I woke up this morning and I could hear a strange noise coming from the coat armoire. Naturally I had to investigate, I opened the door and felt this cold chill take over me. I grabbed my camera to capture the oddity like any other photographer would. I Moved the coats and it appeared to be deeper than normal so I entered the armoire and suddenly found myself in this strange winter wonderland. Just kidding, wouldn't it be so cool tho!! I did visit Edmonton's Ice Castle, a wonderland strait out of the Narnia story built in Hawrelak Park near our city's downtown . As the name suggest, it's a castle made entirely of icicles frozen together, 250 000 000 lb of ice to be exact.
Image taken with iphone 6 by @silvergingerman.
The frozen wonder was inspired by a father from Alpine, Utah who build a much smaller castle in his backyard for his children to play in that included a skating rink and a slide. The next year, A resort approached Brent Christensen to build his wonder for the public for the first time and it became a sensation across the United States. Winter of 2016/2017, the team got invited to begin construction on the first ever construction outside of the US to my Canadian city of Edmonton, Alberta and since have been the most popular location of the ice structure in the company's history.
Shot 1/320 sec. f/9 18mm, ISO 100
The 1 acre structures are built by harvesting icicles from the "icicle garden" and are then frozen into place to form a structure at the rate of 10 000 icicles a day and takes over 5 000 man hours, takes about 8 to 10 weeks to build the wonder. The average wall is 120 inches thick and have lights frozen into the structure for a special night time experience. The water comes from the local North Saskatchewan river and then when it melts, goes to the water treatment plant and returned to the watershed in the spring so it isn't considered as water consumption.
Shot 1/250 sec. f/8 18mm, ISO 140
Since the first castle was built, we were looking to go but for whatever reason, it was either too cold and when the nice temperature came, we were either working or it was to nice and the structures were melting too fast and deemed unsafe for visiting. Finally this year was the year we would finally go for the Narnia experience. Yesterday, the temperature got to around the freezing mark, although it was pretty windy, we had the ice walls to shield us from the elements. We almost missed out again, @silvergingerman was away to visit relatives for almost 2 weeks and it was starting to warm up, next week will be too warm and it will start to melt. The last day to visit the castle will be tomorrow...Talk about cutting it close!
Shot 1/250 sec. f/8 22mm, ISO 200
First on the agenda, I had to claim my throne as the Ice Queen...Hey wait! where is my crown? Well never-mind the crown I'm not sure I want a block of ice one my head anyway. From my throne, I got to watch the ice carver hard at work carving a dragonfly out of a block of ice. He normally works in a private area but the team decided it might be a nice gesture to enhance visitor experience if they got to watch the art in progress.
Shot 1/320 sec. f/9 22mm, ISO 100
Then we had to embrace our inner kid-dult and give the various slides a try. We got on the crazy carpets and joined the kids on the slide down around one of the towers. I have to admit it was pretty fun and as it got used more and more thru-out the evening, it got faster and faster. Towards the end we were jut flying down the tower and some of the turns were a little rough due to speed. I highly recommend it!! Both children and adult approved, we weren't the only over-grown kids giving it a go!
Shot 1/250 sec. f/8 18mm, ISO 200
Once we decided to grow up and act our age, it was time to visit the many structures, arches, mazes and the Grand Dome Room (the second picture of this post)that made up the castle. We made our way to the Fountain Courtyard at the center of the castle where you can really admire the giant frozen works of arts that surrounds the area and relax by the fountain.
Shot 1/250 sec. f/8 22mm, ISO 200
The attraction realistically should take about 45 minutes to fully visit but we wanted to experience full daylight, sunset and the after dark experience and we now had a lot of time to kill so we headed by the near-by fire pit to warm up and entertain the young lady tending the fire with outrageous funny request to turn the castle into a haunted one, she agreed to our suggestions but admitted her boss might not be as thrilled at the ideas as it might scare children, Ah well, nice try at least. After our warm up break it was time to continue on our journey thru the maze awaiting sundown since it was an overcast day and not likely to get a colorful sunset.
Shot 1/160 sec. f/6.3 18mm, ISO 200
Roaming thru the maze, we found a walkway that went up to higher ground to get a better vantage point of the walls below, the walkway led up to another slide that was fully boxed in ice with built in lights in the tunnel, We had to try this one too!! no crazy carpet this time, it was pretty fun too...YAY, express way down! hehe.
Shot 1/125 sec. f/5.6 18mm, ISO 250
In the arches and caves, you could see the amazing view of all the icicles hanging from the ceiling , No they do not fall, they are part of the structure and very secure. The reason icicles fall from buildings is because the ice is on a material that warms up faster than the ice melts causing the icicle to detach. In this case as part of an ice structure, they simply melt at the same speed as the rest and do not cause a hazard.
Shot 1/125 sec. f/5.6 18mm, ISO 280
The sun was finally starting to get dimmer and the Pixel Wall was starting to light up. Every body was rushing to get a picture with the lights, including this curious random kid that was trying to figure out where the lights and the music came from. I had to indulge, it was too cute!
Shot 1/160 sec. f/5.3 65mm, ISO 800
Shot 1/200 sec. f/7.1 31mm, ISO 200
We were starting to get cold after being outside for 3 hours and no warm up, I couldn't feel my fingers anymore but the darkness was almost here and we couldn't give up now, just a few more minutes until it was fully set and we could do one last round with all the walls and towers lit up displaying the colors we had originally planned to see. Maybe next time we shouldn't go so early!!
Shot 1/60 sec. f/4 18mm, ISO 500
Once it was dark, It suddenly got much busier and it seems to be a popular attraction for various model photo shoots and wedding pictures. Who can blame them! I wondered about doing the same thing, start our set of wedding pictures early and buy a gown in time to take some of our pictures early even tho we plan to get married in the summer. It's a magical place to be.
Shot 1/30 sec. f/4.5 34mm, ISO 1250
Shot 1/50 sec. f/3.5 18mm, ISO 800
Shot 1/60 sec. f/4 18mm, ISO 800
It was really hard to chose which pictures to include in my post! There was so many. Overall I came out with over 40 pictures of the day. If you ever have the chance to go to one of these magical landscape, I highly recommend it. It's mainly built to entertain kids but it's just as great of an experience for any adult. I certainly plan to go again next winter, each year they have different designs into the castle to keep things original and they just let the inspiration flow during the construction. Well I will leave you with a few more pictures.
Shot 1/30 sec. f/5 46mm, ISO 1000
Shot 1/60 sec. f/4 18mm, ISO 800
Shot 1/30 sec. f/3.5 18mm, ISO 800
All images taken with Nikon D7000 and Sigma 18-200mm lens unless otherwise stated.
I hope you enjoyed this virtual tour and photo gallery almost as much as I did creating it!
Peace! xox