most of the team that built the world’s tallest ice luge. Notice we’re not wearing warm clothes 🥵
updated 9/3/23 mostly with tweaks, links, formatting, a MUCH shorter title and URL, and seo
the world's tallest ice luge was in Boston
We set the record for the World’s Tallest Ice Luge: 25 feet! The luge was a giant bottle of Johnny Appleseed Hard Apple Cider that sat on top of an ice pedestal that had cider taps frozen into it. In front of the giant ice luge, there was a long ice bar with multiple logos, luges, and bottle freeze-ins. The whole ice project required about 160 blocks of ice and the event and luge took WEEKS to put together. The luge was the centerpiece of an event at Boston’s Seaport World Trade Center that was a promotional vehicle for Johnny Appleseed Hard Apple Cider, of course.
Joe Rimer takes a ride to the very top of the giant ice bottle.
Joe Rimer of Ice Pro Ice Sculptures was the mastermind and lead ice sculptor for the world’s tallest ice luge project. The bottle itself was produced entirely at Ice Pro in Florida and then shipped in 5 pieces via FFE refrigerated transport. (Most of the ice for the bar and luge pedestal came from a lot closer in; see below.)
Peter Slavin of Slavin Productions and Fear No Ice fame was tasked with handling the complicated on-site logistics of the project; managing a sculpture assembly of this sort with a short set up window and without anyone getting killed or injured is a tricky business, but it’s just the kind of thing that Peter has plenty of experience with. Peter brought in experienced help: Chris Swarbrick from Ice Occasions Midwest, Don Lowing, also of Fear No Ice fame, and of course, Chris Plant, who’s big job it was to keep everyone safe, alive, and uninjured.
Joe brought in the rest of his World Record Ice team: Dominique Collel (Images in Ice), Jim Ottens (Crystal Creations), and me (Dawson List, ice dragon ice sculptures and ice carving secrets, now ice sculpting secrets). Joe also brought up Russell Samson of Arctic Ice Sculptures, who frequently works with Joe in Tampa.
Mark Crouthamel and his team at Sculpted Ice Works supplied most of the ice for the bar and the bottle pedestal. They also produced snowfilled logos and luges for the bar, although the color logos and the bar tops with bottles frozen in came from Ice Pro, shipped along with the big bottle.
Victor Tiernan helped out with production of the not-so-simple meltwater control system. Also, Boston’s Brookline Ice came through with cubed ice (which went in the center core of the pedestal) and all the dry ice crucial for an ice sculpture project assembled just as summer was about to begin.
rough schematic for the bottle and pedestal of the world’s tallest ice luge
Producing the bottle was a long process. Joe and I would talk about it as he and his associates at Ice Pro were deciding how to go about it. Based on the overall success of the project and how easily the bottle went together, they made some pretty good decisions. Creating a bottle this large, that can be assembled relatively easily, and that has a minimal number of distracting seams, is very difficult. Lianne Rimer of Ice Pro got the unenviable task of figuring all that out.
And since it’s just a bunch of ice unless it goes together properly, Fred Rimer of Ice Pro created a custom, 300 lb. rigging frame that allowed the bottle sections to be hoisted into place without damaging the ice (except for the strap holes). The bottle label was a large printed acetate that was hung on the bottle with bungee cords. As it turned out, the colors printed on the bottle label are nearly an exact match to the colors in the sand-filled ice logos.
Also, in addition to the record-setting ice luge, the bottle and pedestal also sported 6 hard cider taps that supplied the needs of the guests once the party got going. Those taps got a heavy workout during the festivities.
Chris Swarbrick checks out those tongues-stick-to-ice rumors.
Here’s a SUPER-quick time-lapse video of the luge and bar getting assembled, along with a bit of the ensuing extravaganza:
if only we could have set up the world’s tallest ice luge this quickly! Even just taking it down after the party took WAY longer!
The 25 foot tall Johnny Appleseed ice luge beats the previous world’s tallest ice luge record set by Team Ice Pro (Joe Rimer, Dawson List (me again), Jim Ottens, Dominque Collel, and Max Zuleta) working with Ice Alaska at the 2011 World Ice Art Championships in Fairbanks, AK.
The previous tallest ice luge record, nicknamed “Rapunzel,” was constructed in conjunction with the world’s longest ice bar, which is an official Guinness World Record at 209 feet. The luges aren’t Guinness records, however, because they don’t recognize a tallest ice luge record. (But they DO document the highest jump by a guinea pig, so go figure.) These ice luges are record-setters though. Just not Guinness ones.
links and stuff
Weirdly, considering how big of a project this was, I don’t have a ton of links to put in this section. Now you should see a few links in the body of the post, but I haven’t set up a collection of these crazy sorts of ice experiences yet and I don’t have any info about our other world record quests on the site yet. Soon? Maybe? I guess I could mention that we went through SO MANY ice picks taking down this monstrosity ice luge after the party. They kept bending and breaking. It was amazing!
Other than that, you could also find photos and info from this entry on the ice sculpting secrets Instagram account or the facebook page. You should comment there for now, since I don’t have the older posts comments working yet. Thanks!
