A water main once burst about twenty feet from a side road when I was a kid.
It was mostly obscured by woods and at the time the temperature was somewhat less than thirty but higher than forty below zero.
There was very little traffic on this side road so for a couple of days water gushed up full force as though from a fire hydrant until freezing plugged the water main solid and then it would rupture several feet down from the first break until it did the same thing.
The end result was several twelve foot or so tall solid blue ice mushroom shapes with connected ceilings and level frozen floors hardened into concentric random steps perfect for skating.

It was one of the most incredible almost-natural occurrences I've witnessed...at least until other people found it and threw a little bonfire/spray paint party.

I would like to see this same type of ice sculpture as a competition, but made using relief valves instead of random breakage.
The intricacy and strengths of various frozen shapes could be tinkered with over the years by adjusting pressures and arcs to create translucent scintillating wonderlands as varied as each artist's imagination and technical skill.

There's not a chance I could do an illustration that would do justice to the image in my head...

...I wish.
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Aug 13 2009

Cool!
-- xenzag, Aug 13 2009


I thought it was just going to be skaters carving pictures in the flat arena as they twirlled. This is much better.
-- RayfordSteele, Aug 13 2009


your description is creating amazing ice-cold images in my head +
-- ryokan, Aug 14 2009


<considers sitting down with photoshop for a few hours>

<decides it would be folly>

[+]
-- wagster, Aug 14 2009


good'n
-- dentworth, Aug 14 2009



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