Not what you think. Sure, lots of people got hammered the traditional way while I was up in Fairbanks (I witnessed a few of those), but Mark Davis did it his own way. Fortunately, the story has a happy ending.

    Somewhere in the middle of the six day multi-block competition, I heard that a piece of ice had fallen on Mark Davis, who was working on “Merman’s Resurgence” with his team at site 11, which was 5 sites down from ours. At the front of their site, it was pretty clear that at least one piece had broken free from a larger sculpted piece and it was here that I supposed the accident had occurred. It was pretty easy to see what sort of sculpture Mark was working on too.

    It turned out that Mark was very lucky. He got hit in the head by a falling chunk of ice and was taken to a hospital. He needed a few staples to close a gash and was later able to return to carving. He and his team were able to finish their piece under challenging conditions and did well in the judging.

    In Alaska, with the size of the ice involved, getting hit can be deadly. I myself narrowly avoided a serious injury in 2004 and I was more than a little cautious working around parts of our piece this year, especially late in the competition when the sculpture was much taller and the ice was much weaker (because of the high temperatures). Anytime someone gets hit with a large chunk of ice, it’s a big deal and it’s fantastic that Mark fared so well!

    Oh, I almost forgot to mention what Mark was working on when he was hit in the head: a hammerhead shark!

**On YouTube, they recently added a timelapse video of at least part of the team apparently working on a mini-Merman’s Resurgence at Atlantis Casino. You can easily see a turtle and the center pyramid shape.**

The following comments were on the original blog entry. After some technical difficulties, the blog had to be reconstructed, and this was the only way to keep the original comments.

James Ottens (ICEWIZ)

Last year at the Nationals, We observed the tail of a whale hit a Carver smack on his head. The Tail was about 75 pounds. It knocked him out cold.  Fortunately, he recovered with only a scratch and was able to return to work.  I learned one thing, Stand clear of freshly welded pieces until they are frozen hard and always  keep alert to the danger of falling ice!

Tuesday, March 11, 2008 - 11:03 PM

Stephan Koch

Dawson,

That whale tail hit me on the head---no it wasn't pleasant and it didn't do any damage but it did startle me...ice is fragile, brittle, stunning, and rewarding.  This year in Alaska we had very good results considering the adverse weather conditions.  Kudos to the Ice Alaska decision makers for extending the deadline to 4am in hopes of acquiring some freezing temps.  Even at midnight it was hovering around 30...(while my home state of Indiana was undergoing heavy snow and colder temps). :{

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 01:43 PM