The Harbin International Snow Festival is well known and popular around the world, which is evident in all the photos that are floating around the web. Attending this event has been an aspiration of ours for some time and receiving this prestigious invitation is a great honor.
The Harbin International Snow Festival is one of world’s four largest international snow festivals, along with Japan’s Sapporo Snow Festival, Canada’s Quebec Winter Carnival, and Norway’s Ski Festival. It starts annually on January 5 and lasts for over one month, weather permitting. During this period, people from throughout the world take part in the various artistic, cultural, athletic and tourist events. On average, 800,000 people take in the festival.
The festival encompasses some of the largest snow and ice sculptures ever seen. In fact, the 2007 festival featured a sculpture that was a Guinness Record for the largest snow sculpture: 250 metres long, 28 feet (8.5 m) high, using over 13,000 cubic metres of snow.
We will be given a block that is 10ft x 10ft x 13ft tall and will have about 4 days to sculpt it. Our team in Harbin consists of Theressa Wright (Captain and sculpture designer), Carole Dagenais, Terry Ouellette and Kim Strange. This will be a first time for Carole and Kim to carve together. None of us speak Chinese, but in case we run into a French speaking team, Carole is our official translator.
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