'Ice Farmers' Creating Stunning, Acre-Sized Ice Castle in Canada
The finished frozen palace will feature waterfalls, tunnels and glowing lights.
— -- A crew of workers fittingly nicknamed "Ice Farmers" are constructing a massive acre-sized frozen palace with peaks up to 30-feet-high in Edmonton, Canada.
The ice castle, which will feature waterfalls, slides, tunnels and colorful glowing lights at night when complete, is set to open to the public in January, according to artist Brent Christensen, whose US-based company Ice Castles was born out of a hobby he started in 2000, when Christensen's family moved from sunny California to chilly Utah.
"We started doing winter stuff in the yard, playing around with the kids, making igloos and ice forts and slides and stuff," Christensen previously told ABC News. "And it just evolved. One year I stumbled upon the concept of doing icicles by spraying water."
Christensen's technique of using water to grow icicles is still being used today by his crew he calls "Ice Farmers." The crew grows "ice crops" on special metal racks by spraying water on them until the icicles become large enough to put onto the castle, CTV News reported.
The station added that the "Ice Farmers" produce about 10,000 icicles daily and that they will use about 10 million gallons by the end of the build. But the good news is that all the water will melt and be de-chlorinated before returned to the river.
Christensen has three other ice castles on display this year in Utah, Minnesota and New Hampshire.
His magnificent structures have become famous locations for YouTube musicians, including Alex Boye, who filmed an "Africanized tribal" music video cover of the Disney movie "Frozen" and the song "Let It Go" at Christensen's Midway, Utah, ice castle.
The video had over 74 million views as of today.