3/17/2005: Massive ice sculpture in Alaska... collapses
 

http://cellar.org/2005/icesculpture.jpg

A gent (whose real name I can't map to a Cellar userid, but thanks) suggested this item, which was Farked but deserves further attention anyway. An Alaskan guy started building an ice sculpture by turning on a sprinkler and leaving it on. With further sprinkler adjustment as needed, over 5 months the tower of ice was over 150 feet high.

full story a week ago

Here it is with a guy climbing on it so you can get the scope of it:

http://cellar.org/2005/icewithclimber.jpg

But before I could get to posting the image, a few days ago the tower collapsed!

http://cellar.org/2005/icecollapsed.jpg

colorful web site for the whole thing with many pics

I love this project, and I hope to be able to try my own version one winter.

That is a very cool thing indeed.

Unfortunately PA temps don't usually get cold enough for long enough to sustain such magnificence.

I did get to see such a thing form accidentally ... The water tower at the state hospital is across from my office. The tower sprung a bit of a leak.

State Hospital Security isn't really good about noticing things, including escaping patients. It was cool to watch and so nobody called them, I guess. Or perhaps it was a jurisdicitonal thing, since the Water Tower is on the farm property, and that's being overseen by the county ...

In any event, the cool pile of ice was about half the height of the tower before the weather got too warm.

The whole project timeline here...

http://alaskanalpineclub.org/IceWall/04-05IceWall1.html

I'm sorry. I didn't see the link you already put in your post. Nevermind. :blush:

That's got to be some water bill leaving those hoses running all winter...

It's too bad it collapsed. I was following this thing, and hadn't checked in in a few weeks. I'm sad, kind of like when Old Man of the Mountain in NH collapsed.

that is absolutely awesome. i hope nobody was standing close when it fell.

in july the guy will be out in his yard and find a pile of bones of some poor soul who was admiring the artwork.

Why it collapsed
 

From the story: "Reeves expects to have accumulated around 80,000 tons of ice..."

It crushed itself.

You can see evidence of just how heavy and hard the ice was pressed, by looking at the brilliant blue parts in the wreckage of the last photo. That's the same blue you see in glaciers due to the extreme pressure compressing the ice. The reason for glaciers' blue color is that the density of the ice is so compressed that the ice crystals' forms are such that they absorb all the other colors of the light spectrum.

A vertical conical baby glacier.

I guess the water was free since he paid $200 to $300 per month in electricity pumping it out of the ground.

I think I recall him spraying dye on it. Was any of the dye blue?

And if it was $200-$300/month, that's over a grand for the sculpure in water alone.

yeah, but he has now been featured in the cellar... how can you put a price on that?

I'm glad he did it. It's extremely cool.

Actually, that was blue dye (in the ice tower, not the glaciers).

He did use blue dye, and occasionally yellow (eww). That's not to say there couldn't have been some legit blue ice in there, too.

this guy is perfect cellar material. tony can you see about dragging this guy into our pit of sarcasm?

We have a fountain here in KC that they allow to run during the winter...it does some pretty neat stuff, although since no one actually moves the water source upward over the months, it doesn't get quite as...um...towering.

Here's its normal appearance...

Excellent pics and link, UT. :thumbsup:

There are a couple of ponds in front of office buildings around here that they used to let the fountains run in the winter (cheaper than dealgifying them, I guess) that would freeze with a neat looking water globule in the middle, but I don't recall seeing them lately. I think at least one of the office complexes drained and filled their ornamental ponds ... too many squished geese.

Very cool!
And also very cellar-worthy.
Maybe next time he will try to make his sculpture around some type of structural support. Of course it would need to be extremely substantial, to support that kind of weight.
Years ago, during one of Georgia's rare winter storms, a neighbor at our apartment complex made one by letting his hose nozzle spray a fine mist into a tree about 20 feet tall. It was awesome in the daylight, but that night he put one of those christmas thingies that rotate and change colors in the lower part of the tree(my idea). It was AMAZINGLY beautiful.
The next day the tree collapsed in a heap of broken limbs, completely destroying the tree. (he wanted it bigger).......
The next week he moved out as a result of eviction.
Poor guy.

Great pics!

But how the heck did he manage this without his sprinkler, hose, and pipes freezing and bursting?

Wow, talk about a tough crowd! :biggrin:

Moving water doesn't freeze as readily as stationary water. Good thing to know too, because if you live where it's cold and you lose your heat you need to let the faucets drip or your pipes will burst.