“Northerners who have come to expect a springtime snow-and-ice spectacle on Great Slave Lake can sleep easy this holiday,” Snowking’s Mike Mitchell – A.K.A Black Ice Mike – announced in an news release Friday.
Snowking’s Winter Festival has confirmed the long-standing celebrations will return for the 2021 season “with a twist.”
“There may be aspects of the festival that you will miss this year, but we hope to broaden our scope and bring something cool to our town that we can continue to be proud of,” Snowking said in the news release.
One new feature Yellowknifers can expect at the upcoming festival is something called a winter garden.
The winter garden – an outdoor, open-air playground near the Snowkingdom – will feature “recreational and artistic installations to occupy and amaze Yellowknifers through the month of March,” Mitchell wrote.
The crew is set to begin construction “in earnest” January 1, though ice harvesting for sculptures, windows “and yet-to-be determined uses” is already underway.
To the obvious questions: will there be a castle and a slide, festival staff wrote “darn tootin’!”
Though, they acknowledge “it won’t be quite like castles of years past.”
For those looking to get their Snowking fix ahead of the celebrations, merchandise is now available in the Snowking store online and available for pickup in Yellowknife.
“Stay cool and stay tuned for more details as the seeds of the Garden begin to sprout,” Mitchell writes.