The Fung-icicles team Maxence Jaillet, Madeleine Tetreault and Roxanne Davis, took home $1,500 and the Ice Cup as the winners of the second annual community-based snow carving contest, March 20.
“We were so happy,” Tetreault said after the team’s frozen fungi forest was selected as the top entry. “We worked so long on it, it was so fun.”
Despite the carving process going smoothly, it was a time consuming task for the triumphant trio to ensure everything was ready prior to the voting period, March 15 to 20.
“Because it was so elaborate, we were taking off a lot of the snow from the big chunk, and moving it around, and making it like a 3D sculpture,” said Tetreault.
Their winning creation didn’t remain exactly as planned for long.
“There was like two mushrooms that we had that were a little bit smaller and they kept getting broken and people kept jumping on them all the time,” she said. “So like even before the competition was kind of over, we had to say goodbye to a couple of mushrooms.”
The idea to carve a fungi forest out of a snow block was something that was inspired at the last minute.
“We had a few ideas that we were thinking about doing before that,” said Tetreault. “But I had been working on the (snow) castle all month, like carving inside it, and so kind of near the end when the competition was about to start, I really wanted to try something a little bit more difficult and really push myself this year.
“So we came up with this more elaborate idea,” she said. “I’m really into mushrooms and it just kind of came to us.”
According to the team’s calculations, their snow carving took close to 45 hours to complete.
Tetreault said she would love the opportunity to tackle more snow carving challenges as they arise.
“I am so into it now,” she said. “I just had such a blast doing that.”
The other rankings for the snow carving contest are as follows: second place went to team Birds of a Feather (Shauna Morgan, Stephan Folkers and Ryan McCord), third place went to team We Are All in This Together (Kris Schlagintweit, Annabel Paulson, Elsabé Swanepoel and Niki McKenzie while fourth place went to the YK Toastmasters Club team.