Last weekend saw the opening of the annual Ice Castles exhibition in North Woodstock — a relatively early start, after a recent stretch of cold weather made for ideal building conditions.
While some Granite Staters looking for a dose of the outdoors hit ski slopes nearby, families lined up to explore towers, tunnels, slides, and thrones — all made of ice.
Luke Ely, who helped manage the construction of the castle this year, said it took more than a month to get to this point. He says his team has changed some of their construction techniques, as climate change warms up winter temperatures.
“The way that we build the walls themselves, we try to build them with much more mass and thicker now,” he said. “And there’s different things we’ve had to pay attention to that my predecessors didn’t have to as much.”
Over the past several years, warming winters have interrupted the building process. But Ely said this year has been good.
“We had a lot better weather, a lot colder weather early on,” he said. “So then we were able to open up way sooner than we have.”
That cold weather allowed the builders to get more creative — like making a tunnel roof out of icicles stuck together.
The castle held up to 5 inches of rain while it was being built and will survive more wear and tear as people explore its halls and courtyards this winter.
Ely said it takes long days and lots of hard work to create the castle. But it’s worth it to share some beauty with people during the coldest, darkest months of the year.
The castles remain open to visitors — until it all melts away.
This story was originally published by NHPR. It was shared as part of the New England News Collaborative.
