The World Snow Celebration in Stillwater

It was cold as shit.

We went to the World Snow Celebration for the first time. It was in Stillwater, so it wasn’t hard to convince me to go. They’ve got great food and some cool bookstores. Off we went.

We bundled up. It was going to be about 5 degrees outside with a little breeze. So we wore some layers. We both had two pairs of pants on.

After some beer and some brick oven pizza, we made our way to the Snow sculpting competition, which is kind of the main event of the entire celebration. There were plenty of people there, despite the temperatures. Every once in awhile, I’d see someone completely underdressed and it would make me cold all over. It was fun, but it was cold. I won’t act tough. Look at my face. I’m clearly cold. A couple took our picture and then we reciprocated (always nice when that happens.)

We got used to the cold. The insanely beautiful and cool snow sculptures made you forget that it was well below freezing.

A personal favorite of mine.

They’ve got the model for this one sitting on that bucket at the bottom of the screen.

Some were incredibly cool.

Some were incredibly weird.

I wish I had a better picture of this one. It’s amazing.

The curves they made were so smooth. Its hard to believe its snow.

They only had a few hours left until, ‘tools down’, so they were mostly putting in finishing touches.

Being around these amazing artists and watching them toil away in the cold. It was refreshing to see. Really kind of inspirational.

Also props to Stillwater for having art be the focus of the event. Any event that doesn’t feel 'commercial’ these days is fantastic in my book.