How a dad trying to amuse his kids built an empire of ice

CRIPPLE CREEK • Sometimes art begins with a hose in the backyard.

Twenty years ago, Brent Christensen, father of bored kids, decided to make a small ice sculpture in his backyard. Today, his creativity has snowballed into an empire of ice across the U.S., this year landing in our backyard.

The newest of his Ice Castles opened Dec. 19 on a bluff above town. It is an interactive ice maze filled with frozen architecture, from sleek ice tunnels and ice slides to towers of icicles, every turn a new icy wonder. It is, first and foremost, a castle. Walking around the frozen fortress you see carefully crafted ice sculptures that are as clear as glass, while you are walking through a sculpture unlike any other. An entire venue created out of water pouring through a system of pipes and spouts, it is a “living thing,” making for a new spectacle each day.

Christensen began with nothing but a sprinkler. When he moved to Utah from California in 2000, he found living in a cold winter environment a little novel. He liked getting the kids outside to play in the snow, building snow forts and snow caves.

“I thought it was fascinating to watch the ice grow and engulf things, like the bike,” he said in an interview.

Christensen and the kids just kept adding to their ice creations, until it became a mission and not just a distraction. The next year, Christensen salvaged a bunch of lumber and built a rather large frame in his front yard, and created a lugelike ice slide from the top of it.

“It became a neighborhood attraction, all these kids would come over, our kids would be out there. There would be parties.”

As the ice grew, so did the hype, and the additions kept rolling in. Together the family was growing their wintry escape.

“Instead of two-by-fours to build a house, we were using icicles, spraying water on them, and they become incredibly strong, and that’s when I figured out I could build something taller than the house I was living in,” Christensen said.

“The next year was when I did my first public ice castle.”

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He took a simple idea and turned it into a communal art form. He transformed his “goofing around” into something that could be shared beyond his backyard, in communities across the nation.

So why is it so successful?

“January is not a pleasant month for most of us in Colorado or Utah or lots of places, right?” Christensen said.

“The tree is out on the curb and there is no shortcut to April. I think part of it is, it’s a little bit of an escape. Let’s just embrace this. Let’s embrace the beauty of what we’re living in, this cold weather. And it’s fun. I mean you get to slide down an ice tunnel. It’s an ethereal experience. You walk through an ice archway and under an ice bridge and then you’re surrounded.”

For Christensen, part of the appeal is the natural beauty of winter and its temporary stretch of cold weather, which creates a sense of unique fragility. Ice cannot survive everywhere. It is a constant process to keep the castle sound in structure, and beautiful at the same time.

“We use everything from a teaspoon to a 2-ton excavator to carve the castle,” said Keith Heintzelman, a build manager for Ice Castles. It takes constant balancing, spraying water every night over the entire structure to replenish what melted during the day.

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You leave the real world for a little while when you enter one of Christensen’s Ice Castles.

“It’s like you’ve gone into Narnia. You’re not in Cripple Creek anymore,” he said. It is something outside the bounds of normal art. Christensen says it’s all about curiosity. The Ice Castles open visitors’ eyes to the potential of the earth around them to create its own art.

It took a team of 25 to build the castle in Cripple Creek, and Heintzelman expects over 50,000 visitors over the season. Across the nation, the ice love is spreading. Christensen’s empire now includes more than 100 employees and spans to ice palaces in Minnesota, Utah and New Hampshire.

His empire also includes two “Winter Realms” in Wisconsin and New York, with sleigh rides, an ice volcano, igloos, tubing activities, ice sculptures, ice slides, snow caverns, tunnels and an ice throne. But no castles just yet. Some places just aren’t cold enough, for long enough, to sustain the life of an Ice Castle.

You really cannot control art in this setting, Christensen said, no matter the effort of the dozens of artists. At the end of the day, this art has a much stronger master.

“Mother Nature has the final say,” Christensen said. “When we turn the water on — how’s the prevailing wind, what’s the humidity, what’s the temperature — the details, the ice formations, that’s the organic part, and that’s out of our hands and why it turns out so beautiful.”

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