To the editor:
This year I was again privileged to be able to supervise the building of our Ice Palace. As usual, there are many people and organizations to thank for making it possible.
To start at the beginning, this year the weather was not with us when we needed it. Prior to building, we cleared the ice field, then got several inches of wet, heavy snow. This prevented us from plowing as the snow created slush on top of the ice. Up to this point, Dan Trim and I had been plowing using his four-wheeler and the four-wheeler belonging to the Carnival Committee — thanks, Dan. I need to thank Tucker Houghton for replacing the shifting box on our four-wheeler. After discussing what to do about the ice field, it was decided to try packing it down with a snowmobile. We did this, and it helped. The next day we dragged a section of chain-link fence over the ice field, weighted down with concrete blocks and logs. My thanks to John Pietras for doing this. It helped, but didn’t really smooth the field enough. Bill Madden suggested that we flood the ice field and let it freeze, so Bill and his son Alex cut a hole in the ice, placed a pump over the hole and, with the help of Marty Marks, flooded the ice field. This worked very well. We finally got to the point where the ice field was smooth and it could be plowed again.