Feb 4, 2009

The Ice Palace that prisoners built...

"Prisoners from Camp Gabriels harvesting ice"
© Nancie Battaglia for The New York Times

It's been slow going on the blog as of late, but so is life around here. One more month of frigid arctic cold and then my gears might be grinding again. In a few days our small village will be starting the week long celebration of Winter Carnival, the longest running event of its kind in the Eastern United States. This year It will be celebrating its 112th year.

It's a wonderful invention that breaks the "cabin fever" and monotony of the brutal winters up here. There will be parades, coronation of the king and queen, frying pan toss competitions for the ladies, lumberjack comps for the men, ice fishing tournaments, snowmobile races on the frozen lakes and more. Oh, and lots of activities involving drinking. Actually all of those activities involve drinking.

Later this week I'll get some night shots of this year's Ice Palace all lit up. It's fairly large this year considering the cold we've had, the ice blocks are 18" thick. It comes complete with a Castle, a lone Turret, and a complete pirate ship (this year's theme).

Props to the Prisoners from Camp Gabriels for braving the sub zero temps to help build it. Most of them are transplants from warmer climates, so you know they're freezing their arses off.

8 comments:

jimmieknuckles said...

epic blcoks of dopeness my duder

dope to the ist extent

Aaron said...

epic palace this year. HUGE! I'm not a night photography guy, but I'll try to get some good shots when they light it later this week.

Emily said...

ahem.
I resent the line "lumberjack comps for the men"..
for your information Aaron when I was in college I was on the Timbersports (Lumberjack) collegiate team and we travelled the country competing!
Some girls like axes and chainsaws and spurs and know what a Stihl is!

Aaron said...

all apologies my lumberjill friend. nobody ever said my blog was PC.

Aaron said...

oh, and that's pretty badass btw. ;)

jimmieknuckles said...

is this going to start some insane new trend of you taking photos of your everyday life

oh god, the horror

Aaron said...

@ jimmie...

I'm switching from fine art to photojournalism. Actually though, with the economy and the collector's locking their wallets away in a vault, I'm thinking of switching to raising Alpaca's and selling homemade sweaters at flea markets.

Emily said...

okie dokie.
all is forgiven!
:P