This year's Winter Carnival snow sculpture, a throwback to winter carnivals of the past, will be a giant ski jump complete with snow skier on top.
The sculpture, which was designed by Andy Louis '00 and Ben Moor '00 and will be built by volunteer students, will match the theme for this year's Carnival, "Lest the Cold Traditions Fail: Carnival Through the Years."
"It's a ski jump because there used to be a ski jump out by the golf course and one of the main events at Winter Carnival was the ski jumping competition," Sculpture Committee Student Coordinator Anne Cloudman '02 said.
Construction on the jump started last Friday under the organization of Cloudman and J.R. Lederer '02, and will continue every day until completion or Carnival weekend.
Despite a low initial volunteer turnout of only three people on Friday, things improved yesterday with an estimated 10 to 12 people volunteering their time.
Coordinators Cloudman and Lederer and Dartmouth Outing Club's Pat Leslie '01 are trying hard to recruit more people to work on the sculpture, encouraging everyone interested to come help.
Constructed on a base that will be 20 feet long, and 8 feet wide, the sculpture will stand 30 feet tall. The snow skier in jumping stance will most likely be near the low end of the ramp, but might be moved higher up depending on the height of the lower end.
The building process is a standard one that has been used at past Winter Carnivals and involves piling snow into trash cans which are carried over and dumped on top of the evolving sculpture. Another part of the process involves icing it down with water to make the structure more stable.
The annual Carnival tradition of students planning and building a snow sculpture in the middle of the Green goes back to 1925, when students constructed a medieval castle out of snow.
The sculpture was so popular that it quickly became a Carnival tradition, spawning interfraternity sculpture contests before the tradition evolved into the construction of a single sculpture on the Green.
With weather reports predicting scattered flurries for the next few days, organizers hope the weather will remain hospitable toward construction of the sculpture. Last year's sculpture, a dog, was ruined by inclement weather.
