STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colorado -- A Colorado man builds ice castles that people come from all over the country to see.
Brent Christensen said his ice creations are reminiscent of fantasy worlds.
“It feels like being in a glacier or being inside a Narnia castle or whatever,” he said. “It’s hard to explain.”
Christensen said the process for building the ice castles is simple but time-consuming.
“We have an ice farm, and we’ll grow thousands at a time,” he said. “Then we have people that harvest those and put them into bags for us.”
From there the ice is planted, and layers and layers are added until 40-foot ice castle walls are formed. Christensen said it can be difficult to predict how the ice castles will turn out.
“It’s a little bit of a challenge to picture how it’s going to grow, but it’s also kind of fun,” he said.
The ice castles began in Utah cities Alpine and Midway, but they are now in Steamboat Springs, Colorado and Minneapolis, Minnesota. Christensen said he isn’t ruling out bringing the castles back to Utah, but he said he was glad they left the year they did because the weather wasn’t adequate for their needs.
Alistair Brown is from Dallas, Texas, and he said the ice castles are worth a look.
“I have never seen anything like it before,” he said. “It’s an amazing art form.”
Others, like Jill Rozynski of Long Island, New York, said the beauty of the ice castles is hard to describe.
“If somebody couldn’t see it… It’s one of those things that you would say, ‘a picture wouldn’t even capture the detail of how pretty it really is,” she said.
