Get ready for some ice, ice, baby as the festival committee has unveiled its plans to construct an ice castle as part of the coming International Biathlon Union World Cup stop at the 10th Mountain Lodge in Fort Kent.
Competition begins Feb. 10, but construction of the 80-foot-by-28-foot ice structure is set to begin Jan. 15 when a crew of ice harvesters is expected to arrive from southern Maine.
Dubbed the Chateaux du Festival, the ice castle will be built on a vacant lot in the middle of town from ice blocks harvested at Little Black Lake.
Leading the harvesting is Kenneth Lincoln, president of the Thompson Ice House Museum in South Bristol.
“The unique collaboration between a small-town organization in southern Maine and the festivities committee here in Fort Kent will help make this idea become a reality,” Jesse Jalbert, executive director of the Greater Fort Kent Chamber of Commerce, said. “The harvest is intended to preserve the way that ice had been harvested in older days.”
In those older days, according to Lincoln, the ice was harvested from any frozen body of water — salt or fresh — and stored in special icehouses for year-round use to keep food fresh and cool.
“I used to do this for a living,” Lincoln said. “This was in 1981 and 1982 [when] the fishing boats were still using it [and] I was young and foolish, went to the bank and borrowed $1,500 and started to cut ice.”
While Lincoln was forced to abandon commercial ice cutting after two years, he never lost his appreciation for the art.
“It’s an important part of Maine’s working history,” he said.
Each February the Thompson Ice House celebrates that legacy with a daylong ice-harvesting demonstration drawing up to 600 spectators.
In addition to help from his brother, eldest son and two of his son’s friends, Lincoln is bringing a giant motorized circular saw mounted on a sled to harvest the ice.
“That saw is the main part of our equipment,” Lincoln said. “It’s from the late 1800s or early 1900s but has since had a new motor put on it.”
The crew is also bringing antique handsaws, breaking bars and picks.
“They said we won’t be able to keep up with them because they said they can cut faster than we can haul,” George Dumond, Fort Kent’s point man for all biathlon in-town festival activities. “So we are hoping for a lot of volunteers to show up and prove them wrong.”
Dumond and Jalbert have already put in some serious hours up on Little Black Lake clearing the snow off the ice to maintain its clarity.
“We should have close to 12 inches of ice on the lake right now [more than a week ago] and by the time we harvest we are hoping for up to 16 inches,” Dumond said.
Dumond said the notion for the ice castle was born from a similar tradition of an ice hotel built every year for Quebec City’s winter carnival.
“If they can do it in Quebec, why can’t we do it here?” Dumond said. “At first we thought we were crazy but when we really started entertaining the idea we said, ‘yeah, we can make this happen.’”
The ice castle will serve as a nightclub during the biathlon event with a deejay providing music over the three nights of the World Cup in Fort Kent.
Jalbert said lights will be strung up in and around the blocks of ice forming the castle with a nightly laser light show inside creating more special effects.
Local masons Norman Plourde & Sons will oversee the construction with assistance from local hardware store Desjardins Project Place.
Dumond said the public is invited to watch as up to 800 giant blocks of ice are harvested from Little Black Lake, transported to town and turned into the ice castle.
“The buzz around town right now is people can’t believe we are doing it,” Dumond said. “We can’t either.”
Anyone wishing to volunteer time or equipment in taking the ice off of Little Black Lake may contact Jalbert at the Greater Fort Kent Chamber of Commerce office at 834-5354.
