Alaskan Alpine Club
The 2005-06 Ice Towers.
11 October 2005 through 3 November 2005.
This year Big John Reeves the local big ice artist has decided to make two ice towers, on the bluff above the Radome.
A few of the grand ideas for this year, such as the web cam, lights in the ice and certain really wild suggestions, were financially frozen out by our benevolent government seizing more money for George's ego gratification wars, stifling fuel taxation and other insatiable greed to feed the glutenous government at the cost of what the people would rather do with the money they worked to earn, if you can imagine such a thing endemic to unquestioning societies throughout human history. When the DemocanRepublicrat swine realize that the people are having fun spraying water into freezing air, the government thieves will tax ice.
Until then, stand back everybody. This is serious....
11 October. The official turn-on-the-pump photo.
John's mom, switching on the main pump.
John's wife switched on the other pump for the other ice tower.
Ice artists need a lot of assistance.
The wiring meets the official Ice Towers Code, revised edition.
North site spraying water in the photo on the left, and the two initial nozzles about 150 feet apart from each other.
The irrigation sprinkler heads will be adequate until we make some adjustments on the official nozzle heads.
The Radome, otherwise known as the golf ball, is the well known surplused radar dome from Donnelly Dome, near the Alaska Range south of Fairbanks. Rumored to have been developed by MIT, the Radome housed the radar for the old Cold War military game. The radar controlled the Nike Missiles ready to shoot down those pesky Soviet Bear Bombers constantly rumored to be sneaking around the coast of Alaska, looking for a spot between the Radomes. Early commie sky terrorists, back when terrorists could afford their own airplanes. The Nike Missiles never shot down a single Russian Bomber, but the mosquito population was sometimes impacted during the test firings. Kinda makes my bragging about shooting mosquitoes with my 44, a bit lower on the macho scale. The dome is a bit of Alaska history. An increasing array of rumors are predicted for its future use. Do not let Homeland Insecurity know where it is, or they will resurrect the old Nike Missile program, and point the missiles at passenger jets. When a dome project advances, we will report on the rumor of it.
19 October. Global warming is retarding ice formation, but we are losing 7 minutes of sunlight each day, so we anticipate global cooling within days.
21 October. Added the new nozzle head to the south pipe. Someone gave us the fancy steel nozzles. Dunno what they will do. The welded nut on top is for easy removal of the head. Added a similar nozzle head to the north site a couple days later. The commercial nozzles are a bit pricey. The brass hose barbs, with carefully mangled ends, are cheap, but require a bit of mangling time.
22 October.
South tower in left 2 photos. North tower on right.
26 October
Both sites in left photo, then south and north.
The new nozzle head makes some cool fan shapes.
28 October. Added 5 feet of pipe. 10 feet of pipe on each tower now.
31 October. Tower tops about 11 feet from ground. Added 5 feet of pipe after the photos. 15 feet of pipe in each tower.
North tower on left. South tower on right and below.
1 November. South tower on left. North in middle photo. Both on right.
Did not add pipe. Each tower is about 16 feet high. The ice if forming nicely on the bluff side below the towers.
3 November.
Added 5 feet of pipe after the photos. 20 feet of pipe in each tower now.
The nozzle head in the south tower was six feet below the top, which required a lot of ice chopping, which took awhile. By the time I turned the water back on (closed the bypass valve at the bottom of the bluff), some water remaining in the line had frozen, and almost blocked the flow. It dribbled for about an hour before the flow melted through. We may have an interrupted gradient between the nozzle head and bypass valve, which may imperil the total tower height, which therefore requires the odds makers to adjust the odds for the rumored guessing. We will strive to minimize the no-flow time while changing nozzle heads.
The towers are starting to attract attention. Passing cars on the road are stopping to let their drivers watch the water freeze.
The 2006 Calendar of the 04-05 Ghost Raven Ice Tower. 12 cool pictures certain to be noticed on your wall.
Available from dredge2 at gci.net (substitute @ for at, written this way to avoid spam auto address grabbing). Use the subject line: Calendar
The glare on the website photo is not on the calendar.
25 dollars. Serious collector item of the early Fairbanks ice tower, in what will be a major ice tower building craze sweeping the north country, or something like that.
You will want this first calendar when the second calendar is produced next year, and not that many were printed.
And that is the whole show for the moment.
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03-04 Ice Wall
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