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Ice Palace construction begins

The Ice Palace Workers 101, led by Dean Baker, left, cut out blocks of ice from Pontiac Bay Thursday morning as they begin construction of the 2021 Ice Palace. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)

SARANAC LAKE — Volunteers began cutting and placing the first 256 blocks of the Winter Carnival Ice Palace Thursday, kicking off a week-and-a-half of work.

Ice Palace Workers 101 Director Dean Baker said Thursday night that construction would take a hiatus today because of the cold weather. Temperatures are projected to be around -25 degrees with wind chill.

He said it is too dangerous to work in that cold weather and the cold makes the work much slower.

“It makes it difficult to get the ice out because as soon as you saw the ice and get water in the crack it’s frozen again,” Baker said. “You’re just fighting it the whole time.”

He was not worried about the break in work.

Garrett Foster operates an old ice saw Thursday, cutting 256 blocks of ice for the Ice Palace in the first day. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)

“This is not a serious setback. We have got plenty of time,” Baker said. “We have a whole week ahead of us and they made a good start today.”

He said all 256 blocks cut Thursday were removed from the water and by the end of the workday the first circular tower stood 10 blocks high.

Baker said the only day of construction held up by weather that he could remember around a decade ago when it dropped to 37 degrees below zero.

Baker said he would determine if work will resume Saturday later today.

The work started Thursday at around 7:30 a.m. when a few early birds started carrying down the tools of the trade: giant hand saws to cut the ice, long spiked poles to push it along and the big homemade engine-powered saw Garrett Foster cuts the ice blocks with every year on Lake Flower’s Pontiac Bay.

The 2021 Ice Palace circa Jan. 28, 9:25 a.m. is not yet in its final form. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)

Foster has cut the ice for the past 17 years, he said, using a machine Harry Duso built in 1939. This is the one time a year Foster uses the saw, but he guided it deftly along the ice, cutting out a grid of blocks to be broken out by hand.

He was taught by Harry’s son Don Duso, who cut the ice from the mid-1950s until 2004.

“The story has it that the village had their own saw and sometime back in the 1950s they lost their saw in the lake,” Foster said.

The Dusos lent their ice-cutting machine and expertise, and took up the cutting cause.

Blocks are cut away using hand saws and floated shoreside with poles. An excavator plucked them out of the lake and tenderly handed them to another excavator, which placed them at the Palace site.

The Ice Palace Workers 101, led by Dean Baker, in red, cut out blocks of ice from Pontiac Bay Thursday morning as they begin construction of the 2021 Ice Palace. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)

In the first hour a group of workers began to gather, waiting for the waterway to be cut.

“The first day is always slow,” Baker said.

That was fine. While waiting to put their hands to work, the gathered volunteers caught up with each other, a rarity during the pandemic.

The 2020 Winter Carnival was held mere weeks before the coronavirus struck the U.S. and was one of the last community events in Saranac Lake before they were all canceled. For some of the palace volunteers, that was the last time they had seen many of these folks.

“How’s the last 340 days been?” one asked the others.

Workers who built Ice Palaces years ago shared stories of builds in the past, when they used snowmobiles dragging ice blocks on sleds to transport the bricks.

Though they have excavators and front-loaders now, most of the work is still done by hand.

This is a monumental task. It’s hard, cold and wet work for long hours every day. But many hands lighten the load, and these hands are dedicated. The community gathered there on the ice was a strong, well-oiled machine.

The work of preparing the ice leading up to Thursday took longer than usual and resulted in two-tone blocks: clear blue ice and cloudy white frozen slush.

A wet, heavy snow two weeks ago made forming solid ice on Lake Flower difficult. It was too heavy to plow off, and kept accumulating. Though the weather has been cold, new snow insulated was was below, keeping it at a slushy consistency.

In a “last-ditch effort” Sunday, Baker said volunteers cut a hole in the ice and used a pump and hose to pump water on top of the ice, flooding it. This is what made the ice usable, Baker said.

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