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Despite adverse weather conditions and sparse help, a few dedicated students managed to preserve building a snow sculpture.
This year's sculpture depicts a wolf perched on a rock, howling at the moon.
"Not having snow was hard because we had everything set, then there was no snow and we ended up behind schedule," said Sara Paisner '96, publicity chair of the Winter Carnival Council . "Then, just to mock us, it snowed on the last weekend."
"It was frustrating," she said.
Laurence Ufford '67 who works for a local construction company, Trumbull-Nelson, had to deliver a few truck loads of zamboni shavings to supply the ice for the snow sculpture.
"It felt weird having this pile of snow in back of the sculpture, it felt like we were building the sculpture in the fall," Paisner said.
Sculpture Chair Patricia Bankowski '95 described some of the frustration the builders encountered in the process.
"We started on Friday, we worked on Friday and Saturday and then on Sunday we had 68 degree weather and we just couldn't work," she said.
"The ground was too soft so we couldn't put up the scaffolding," Bankowski said.
When the warm weather switched to cold, mother nature was equally detrimental.
"The pipes froze the last couple of days so it was impossible to work on the sculpture," Paisner said.
"People from Facilities Operations and Management came out and went through the entire pipe line with blow torches, but it still did not work," Bankowski said
"The weather was just too cold," Paisner said.
The howling cold weather has also hindered the sculpture workers ability to climb the scaffolding and work on the structure.
"It is so easy to get things done on the ground, but when you are doing things 30 feet up it takes time to get buckets of snow up there and every time someone goes up they have to put on a harness, " Bankowski said.
The lack of students willing to help out also caused problems for this year's sculpture.
Paisner said the 1995 Class Council's inability to publicize a class day for working on the sculptures resulted in a poor showing of seniors at the sculpture building.
Even though numerous problems plagued the building process, Bankowski still felt optimistic about the sculpture's outlook because of the positive feedback received about the sculpture.
"I think people are really fascinated by how it is being built because it is so different than how it was built last year," Bankowski said.
Bankowski departed from the technique employed in the past few years and returned to the frame technique, a process that has not been used in twenty years.
Bankowski said the idea to return to the old technique was sparked by a conversation she had with the Winter Carnival Council and Programming Coordinator Linda Kennedy.
"There was a rumor that it couldn't be built with the frame method because it was dangerous, but Kennedy told me that it didn't have to be done that way," Bankowski said.
She then spoke to the Director of Outdoor Programs Earl Jette, other administrators and alumni, and made frequent trips to the archives to find out how the method was used in the past.
"The main thing we used for the frame is metal lumber," Bankowski said.
She said the material was suggested by Engineering Professor Francis Kennedy and Roger Howes, the machine shop supervisor of the Thayer School of Engineering, who said it had been used in the past to build the snow sculpture.
"The base of the snow sculpture is basically a 8 ft.
