If you've driven around Wausau, you may have noticed some giant snow sculptures. They're part of a 22-year-old tradition that the Woodson Art Museum brings to the area.
The three members of the USA Snow Sculpting Team began chipping away on Monday at a slide made entirely of snow and ice on the 400 Block. They're also working on a giant triceratops outside the Art Museum.
"Thanks to the City, they preserve snow in parking lots," said Amy Beck with the museum. "It needs to be pristine snow. That is then brought here and packed into concrete forms and tamped down. What results then is a giant block of snow."
The captain of Team USA, Tom Queoff, says although their creations look complicated, they're actually well-calculated designs.
"We make a scaled model of what we want to do," Queoff said. "And then we put a plexiglass grid box around it and then we grid off our snow block, similar to what's on the plexiglass. And then we can all look at it and see basically where the form is in there."
Queoff and his two teammates, Mike Martino and Mike Sponholtz, who are all from Wisconsin, travel around the world competing and creating these sculptures. They have been coming to Wausau every winter since 1989 and say it's one of the best places for this challenge because the temperatures and amount of snow are just right.
Both sculptures will be open to the public to view and interact with on Saturday as part of this year's Winterfest.
Winterfest
