STILLWATER, Minn. (KFGO KVRR) – Known much more as a summer destination, it’s not uncommon for the streets of Stillwater to be a lot quieter in the winter, at least that was the case before the city brought in the World Snow Sculpting Championship.
“The impact has been remarkable. We have between 50,000 and probably 100,000 it’s really hard to gauge visit during this week and then the subsequent weeks. Last year we had over a billion media impressions. There’s not a lot of news in January, right? And this was it. People coming from around the world to visit here and make really amazing art,” said Co-Chair of Word Snow Sculpting Committee Sara Jesperson.
12 teams line the frozen banks of the St Croix River and have traveled from as far away as Turkey Finland and even Ecuador. It could be hard to pick a favorite.
When looking at all the amazing sculptures you may find some familiar names representing North Dakota on the world stage.
“Four sculptures at the POWMIA Plaza in West Fargo on that brutally cold weekend last weekend,” said Team North Dakota’s Michael Nelson. “Unfortunately, the Frostival snow sculpture event had to be canceled due to the lack of snow, but we’ve been doing that for about the last eight years since it started and that’s actually how we met as a team. Josh and I were on a team, and we would compete against Jay Ray who typically worked solo. We trade off wins it seems like we would always be taking either 1st or 2nd and when we decided to hit the world stage we teamed up and we’ve been working together ever since.”
Coming in is the reigning national champions team North Dakota looks to up the ante with everyone one of their creations.
“The whole point of this is to show element of weightlessness,” said Nelson. “So, we have a female form in this dream like position. Everything we’ve been doing from the start of this project has been to push the limits of the snow and make things look like you it’s impossible to do out of snow.”
The cold weather showed up just in time for the event. unfortunately, the weather also meant poor traveling conditions for some of the teams, but the frigid temperatures couldn’t stop a warm gesture of hospitality.
“No tools, no clothes, nothing,” said Marie-Claude-Paris-Tanguay of Team Canada. “All of our luggage were lost somewhere in the corner of a room of Air Canada so no no we didn’t have anything for the first day. We had some clothes that everybody lent to us. Our cool neighbors from North Dakota here they lent us some tools, and everybody was trying to help us”
“They did get their tools finally, and they’ve been doing an amazing job, but we did not hesitate, said Nelson. “We had the luxury of getting to drive here so we had two truckloads full of gear, so we have plenty to go around. We probably have enough tools for everybody here. It seems like the one unifying thing is everybody is very supportive it’s much less competitive than you might think”
When asked what winning the grand prize would mean to them Nelson said, “You know the big thing is opening up to other events. This is an amazing event, but there are other international competitions that are application only. There’s big competitions in China and Japan and Europe. what we’d really like to do if we win this is to start looking at some of those international competitions and bring team North Dakota overseas and show the rest of the world what we got.”
After all their hard work team North Dakota placed third. Team Turkey got the second spot. Despite not having their tools for the beginning of the competition, team Canada took home the first place prize.
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