Years back, I missed a chance to visit the Aurora Ice Museum at Chena Hot Springs Resort. (It would have been my third visit.) But at least I had the option of ordering the coolest calendar full of fantastic photos from the frozen museum! Ok, not anymore, since this was over a decade ago.
(Also, ignore the 2011 at the top; it was a 2012 calendar. The cover was correct on the ordering page.)
updated 9/5/23 with updated info, a little snark, formatting, links, and seo
coolest calendar ever?
World champion husband and wife ice sculptors Steve and Heather Brice had threatened to do this years ago, and then they actually did it:
they put out a 2012 calendar filled with photos of the Aurora Ice Museum!
The Brices built the Ice Museum in partnership with Chena Hot Springs Resort, which is about an hour away from Fairbanks, Alaska. The museum is up year round, even through the near 24 hour daylight Alaskan summers, and features an innovative refrigeration system that’s powered by geothermal energy.
I was in Fairbanks while we were working on our world record ice bar, but I unfortunately couldn’t fit in another visit to Chena and the Ice Museum. I’ve seen it a couple of times in the past, and it had changed significantly between visits, so I’d love to see it again. That year, my only option was to settle for a calendar, unfortunately. But that’s better than nothing!
The museum keeps the Brices busy during the periods when they’re not off winning world championships. From what Heather tells me, it can keep them very busy when Chena is expecting a lot of visitors. Each guest that buys a drink from the ice bar gets it served in a handmade ice martini glass and just making all those martini glasses is plenty of work. I had one once, it was a very nice appletini. Don’t quote me on this, but then I think afterwards, you can smash the glass π± If you get in trouble for that later, it wasn’t MY idea π€¦ββοΈ
Some time back, Heather sent me this photo showing the detail on one of the horses that’s part of a larger jousting knights display in the museum. This should give you an idea just how cool the ice art will be in the coolest calendar ever π₯Ά
If you’d like to see what kind of fantastic ice art two of the world’s best ice sculptors can create when they’re not hampered by the time limits of competitions, get in your time machine, set it to 2011 and go back and order your calendar from the Brices for only $12.00, shipping included! Or, you could go the almost certainly cheaper route and go visit Chena Hot Springs. Even cheaper, you could order the book Contemporary Ice Sculpture (their ice is on the cover). Or, cheapest of all, you could go to the Brices’ website.
Also, if I wasn’t so lazy, I’d have managed to restore the Brices’ gallery on this site by now. I will soon, since as I write this, I’m almost done repairing the giant mess in which I’d previous left this website. I’d started rebuilding it and then went off and got distracted, so until the last few months, it’s been pretty worthless. In the meantime, you can check out the ice art from other featured ice sculptors. Plus, there’s a good chance that by the time you read this, I’ll have restored the Brices’ gallery there and somehow have forgotten to update this post π¬
other links and stuff
You COULD also find photos and info from this coolest calendar on the ice sculpting secrets Instagram account or the facebook page. You can comment there, instead of here, since it’s unlikely that I’ve fixed the commenting on older posts by the time you read this. Thanks!
