This is a Personal Touch, a chance to check in with ordinary people making an extraordinary difference in the world. I’m Rebecca Cressman, and today we are talking to the extraordinary craftsman behind Ice Castles that have been spotted, I’m going to say in Midway, Utah, although they have been throughout the Wasatch Trail before. Brent Christensen, thank you so much for joining us.
A: Oh, thank you, Rebecca. Thanks for having me.
Q: When I say Ice Castles, these are indeed huge creations that you have made with water—cascading water freezing into the shape of natural styled castles. How did this come about, Brent?
A: Well, it started just with some spare time in the winters and a little bit of boredom really. I had a neighbor in Alpine who every year puts a pole out in the yard and runs water out of a sprinkler, and it would just form a big mount of ice and would take some really pretty shapes. So we did that the first year, and then each year I would do something a little different. The second year, we included some slides and tunnels and some interactive stuff for the kids and it evolved from there. And from last year to this year, we took a quantum leap when we got the resort to invite us up to build on a real big scale.
Q: And it is a big scale. When you’re talking about the resort, we’re talking about Zermatt, which is around the corner from Heber in Midway. Look over your blog where you started in your home, you learn that you’ve been creative from the get go. Not only are you a father of six but that you are the type of father that builds ice skating rinks in the backyard, so you’ve got a creative side to you that you are looking for that creative outlet. I guess, how did you get that experience to feel like, “Okay, I can actually create something that is huge, stories tall, and understand what would happen as the water melted down?” Or is it just trial by experimentation?
A: Well, I have learned a lot, and I’m learning a lot, although probably it was last year, halfway through the season when I was building this, that I decided to build the castle—or grow it really is more the term I would use—without any substructure, because the year before we just had a big mess to cleanup in the spring when it melted.
Q: When you say substructure, you mean that before you had a wooden structure underneath and the ice would go on top.
A: Yes, exactly. We had a wood frame. Yes. And the ice would form on top of it. So last year, I wanted to do something without that so it was just a real lucky thing. I just stumbled upon a way to with running water, spring water at night, and using icicles as the building blocks, I’ll put up the icicles and it’ll catch the water and form into these really strong columns, I guess, for lack of a better word. So it allows me to grow a column or a tower 30 feet a day in some cases depending on how fast I want it to grow and how much time I could put into it. So yes, a lot of it was just goofing around and some lucky breaks. It’s been nice because as they do melt, because we’re going through a little bit of a heat wave right now, they melt but elegantly, I guess, for lack of a better word. They melt and they’re very pretty when they melt as well. They take on a different look and there’s nothing threatening about them because they’re grown from the ground up, so the bottom layers are thicker than the top. We don’t have big huge ice boulders falling down, which is nice. And so yes, a lot of it has been very accidental or fortuitous or however you want to refer to it. It’s been one of the funnest experiences I’ve been lucky enough to go through.
Q: And you’ve built 18 of the towers?
A: Right. They’ve allotted me a big spot of land right in front of the resort. Part of the thing last year was we built our Ice Castle on a busy street and people were quite enthralled by it and so they would be stopping—there’s no shoulder. They would pull on to the sidewalk or they would try to get out and look at it and there wasn’t really a place where people could safely look at it. So the great thing about this is we’ve been able to have thousands of people actually walk. It was created as a walking path that goes in and around these Ice Castles and there’s a runoff from a hot springs so you have this pond in the middle that reflects. It’s just beautiful. It’s been so great to let people go through there. You can get right up close to it and people can touch the different ice formations because that’s half of it right there. There’s one tower that’s quite large. It’s probably 40 feet, and that one has a tunnel that goes right through the center of it and it’s cool. The ice there is so thick and so blue it feels like you’re in a glacier. It has just been really fun to let people be interactive with it rather than looking at it from the street.
Q: When you say interactive with it, for you to create these, I gather that most of your work with the sprinklers, the water that you’re using to be able to expand these ice towers and Ice Castles, that most of you work is done at night, late at night. So is it the kind of thing where it has taken 18-hour days to build these Ice Castles? And if so, are your children involved in the creation too?
A: Yes. They have been really supportive. I’ve been able to involve our kids that are at home to some degree or another depending on how much they want to be, but we have all been involved with it to some degree. My wife’s been just a fantastic support. On one hand it would be nice if I didn’t have to drag them all into it, but on the other hand, I think we’ll really have some fun memories from it. It’s really been a magnificent experience. We’ve met people from—you name it, we’ve met them. People come from all over the place to Utah and a lot of them have meandered by and gone through the Ice Castles. So it’s really been a wonderful family experience as well. So yes, they have been very helpful.
Q: And speaking of a family experience, it was a change in your family dynamics that had you thinking, “Maybe this is something that we can use to help us—were you looking to supplement your income? You had two missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints out at the same time and you wanted to support them. So talk to me a little bit about how this factored into that.
A: Sure. Well, I think a lot of us are always looking to supplement income. It seems like I always am to some degree or another. We started building Ice Castles for fun a few years ago just before the boys went on mission. We had two of them that both went out within six months. That could be a little bit of a challenge financially, but not something that we would complain about because it’s great to have them out there doing what they’re doing. But this just turned out to be something where… my business is a little seasonal in the winter. It slows down a little bit. This has been something where we’ve lived here at the resort while we’ve done it so we saved on the housing expenses. We rented our house out and it made some additional income at the same time. So it’s really just been I guess I would say, miraculous. It’s just one of those things you just never would—if you asked me a year ago what I was planning on doing, or two years ago, that would have been the farthest thing from my mind. I would have thought you were crazy if you had told me that I would be building an Ice Castle and making money doing it. So yes, it’s been really, really cool.
Q: Well, it’s a wonderful image to think of you at night building these monuments made out of ice, and in order to support your boys who are out building their own faith and their own wonderful works. So in some sense, this will be a time period where you can look back at these incredible photos that have been taken and it’ll represent much more than just an artistic expression. It’s a time in your family’s life, so that in itself is just spectacular! Do you have photographers coming from all around the country trying to snap these images because against the light it’s spectacular?
A: Yes, yes. Luckily there are, because I’m not a photographer unfortunately, but we do have photographers all the time from all over the country. Whether or not they have come out simply for the Ice Castle or they just happened to be in Park City or something, but one yesterday was from California and I have met some from back East. But yes, they have a heyday. I mean the intricacy of the ice formations and the subtleties of the light are just really amazing. And it’s different from one hour to the next as the sun goes down, or from one day to the next depending on the lighting and the growth of the castle, so, we have photographers are going crazy out there.
Q: You said that two years ago, you couldn’t have imagined you would be the man known as the ‘Sculptor of Ice Castles in Utah.’ What about two years from now, do you envision yourself continuing this, still building more Ice Castles?
A: At this point, I do. It looks like we will probably be doing a repeat here. I definitely plan on doing it again, hopefully here. The venue here is fantastic. It’s a little bit elevated up off the valley floor. It’s got a beautiful reflecting pond in the middle. It has geo thermal springs that run off down through and form a pool right in the middle. And on cold nights you have all the steam coming up which adds to the experience. So yes, I would love to just do it as long as we can until people get tired of looking at them, which hopefully will be more than a year or two. We will just have to see how it goes.
Q: Right. And then these sculptures should stay in some form or so for the next couple of months? They’ll be melting down but they may still be there in spring, in April and May?
A: There will be parts in there for quite a while. The base of the large castles is solid ice for several feet and so it takes a while to melt that. We hope to have the trail open so people can walk through them through the end of the month, through the end of February. And beyond that, we’ll just have to see depending on what the weather does. They drip quite a bit on days like today where it’s 40-plus degrees. The nights aren’t getting as cold as they used to so we’ll just have to play it by ear and make sure that everything stays safe and we’ll keep it open as long as we can. We are getting a lot of people still coming out.
Q: Well Brent, I really appreciate your time and I appreciate that you took those talents and that curiosity you had and made something absolutely beautiful that the rest of us can share. Congratulations.
A: Thank you so much. I appreciate that.
Q: And I’m Rebecca Cressman. We want to thank you for joining us for this week’s edition of a Personal Touch. Be sure to check your email next week to find out who else is making a difference in our world with a 'personal touch'.
End of interview.
