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Too much snow in McCall?
It's possible,
Winter Carnival
organizers say
By Tim Woodward
The Idaho Statesman
Even in McCall, home of
Idaho's best-known winter
carnival, there's such a thing
as too much snow.
"It's swirling and blowing
everybody off their sculp-
tures," Bonnie Bertram, own-
er of the McCall Pancake
House, said Monday. "Other
than that, it's OK"
As of Monday, it had been
snowing steadily in McCall
since Saturday. About a foot
of fresh snow has left the
town looking like a winter
postcard.
"I'd say we have 3 feet on
the level, and the berms are
G or 7 feet high," said Bertram,
co -chairwoman of the McCall
Winter Carnival's sculpture
committee. "It's more snow
than I can remember, and I've
been here over 20 years.
"There is such a thing as
too much snow, and we're
about at that point. But it's
better than snowing and rain-
ing, which we've had in the
past. I think once this stops,
we're going to be just fine."
Heavy snow warnings are
in force for McCall, with G
inches falling Monday and
up to 3 more expected today.
Clearing is possible by the
weekend, maybe in time for
Friday's opening ceremonies.
"I ordered the snow for
early in the week, and we've
got plenty of that, so I've got
sunshine ordered for the
weekend," Winter Carnival
Director Rob Lyons said.
Concern that the heavy
snowfall and the Olympic
torch activities scheduled for
Friday and Saturday in the
Treasure Valley would keep
crowds from making the trip
to McCall are largely un-
founded, Lyons said.
"I don't anticipate it taking
much of a toll. All the motels
are pretty much full. I un-
derstand if people want to
stay and see the torch, but we
want them up here, too. And
bookings are looking good."
The carnival's trademark
ice sculptures are being built
this week. Sculptors kept a
close eye on the weather
Monday as temperatures flirt-
ed with rising above freezing.
"It's just above 30 now,
which we don't want," said
Marilyn Krahn of Krahn's
Home Furnishings, a peren-
nial entrant in the ice -sculp-
ture contest. "We like it more
like 25 degrees and below."
Temperatures so far have
stayed low enough that no
damage has been done.
"All we've had to do is
brush the snow off," Krahn
said. "We've been doing a lot
of that."
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Photos by Gerry Melendez / The Idaho Statesman
Nancy Krahn of Krahn's Home Furnishing works on her ice sculpture titled "Cheeseburger in Paradise," one of the entries in this year's McCall
Winter Carnival.
Carnival art depicts American spirit
N.Y. flag -raising
scene is popular
sculpture
By Susan Whaley
The Idaho Statesman
Even Sharlie, Payette
Lakes legendary monster,
shows her patriotic side in
the snow sculptures at this
year's McCall Winter Car-
nival. The slinky serpent
rides a bobsled for the U.S.
Olympic team in one and
carries the Olympic torch
in another.
Eagles, flags, Liberty Bells
and slices of Americana
were everywhere as the
states biggest mid-winteif 4
party began Friday. The •
highlight of the 10-day ^pl
ebration, which continues
through Sunday, Feb. 3, is
today's Mardi Gras Grand
Parade. It begins at noon.
One of the most popular
snow carvings is a repro-
duction of the famous flag -
raising scene at the World
Trade Center.
"This is the best one I've
seen so far," said Tyler Mo-
gensen, 24, of Meridian,
who can hardly remember
a year that he hasn't been
See Carnival on page 6
4
Carissa Hill, left, and her mother, Roxanne Hill, work on their ice sculpture outside
R an c RiirgPr nen The sculpture honors the local Special Olympians.
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Carnival
From page 1
at Carnival. "The meaning behind
it is what helps it stand out for
sure."
The celebration began Friday as
a steady stream of cars filled the
highway into town. Light snow fell
off and on through day, adding to
mounds piled around town from
storms that have passed through
the area all week.
The weather was perfect for Sue
Hansen of Boise and her friend
Ginny Johnson of Diamond Bar,
Calif., who drove from Boise for
the day to see the ice sculptures
and soak up their first Carnival ex-
perience.
"It's great. We love this," said
Hansen as she sipped hot choco-
late in front of a statue of Lady Lib-
erty. "It could snow even harder
and wed be happy."
For the last week, townspeople
have worked late into the night to
finish 52 ice sculptures before vis-
itors arrived.
The crew at Krahn's furniture
store put the finishing touches on
their grand -prize winning sculp-
ture, called "Cheeseburger in Par-
adise," at 1130 p.m. Thursday, then
returned at 7:30 a.m. Friday morn-
ing to sweep off snow that had fall-
en overnight.
Why a Jimmy Buffet song title?
"I'm kind of a Buffet fan, a par-
rothead," said Dan Krahn, who has
been building sculptures at the
store for 24 years.
"We decided to celebrate Amer-
ica on the lighter side," he said.
"We thought, let's do something
fun."
In typical Krahn fashion, the de-
tails make the cheeseburger and
Idaho fries look good enough to
eat. The palm trees are a nice
whimsical touch.
Carnival week is a mixed bless-
ing for some merchants, such as
Mark Jensen, 23-year owner of the
Chevron station in the middle of
town. The thousands of extra peo-
ple in town scare some of his reg-
ular customers off, he said, but vis-
itors make up the difference.
"It really helps the restaurants
and motels and condos," Jensen
said. "All the retail businesses ben-
efit to a certain extent. Overall, it
creates a positive impact."
Business definitely was brisk at
the McCall Rotary Club hot dog
stand, another Carnival tradition.
For 29 years, the Rotary has been
hawking hot dogs, chorizos, soda
and hot chocolate from the same
downtown sidewalk stand to fund
scholarships for local kids.
"We've been doing better this
year than we ever have before,"
said David Holland of McCall.
"The snow is absolutely great. This
year, were good to go.
The club's selection of carnival
beads also was proving popular.
By mid -afternoon, Rotary Club
member Hal Cusick had sold more
than 1,500 strands of brightly col-
ored beads, which people wear
over their sweaters and parkas.
"This is part of the winter tra-
dition in Idaho," Holland said. "It
just isn't winter unless you go to
Winter Carnival."
Winning sculptures
Grand prize: Krahn's Home
Furnishings, "Cheeseburger in
Paradise"
1st place: Mountain Central
Association of Realtors,
"American Eagle"
2nd place: Payette National
Forest, "United We Stand"
3rd place: Team Carnival,
"United We Stand"
Nature: Hometown
Sports/Mountain Lake
Realty/The Pub, "Celebrate
the American Bison"
Action: Sagebrush BBQ,
"The Sagebrush Armored Color
Guard"
Historical: Team Carnival,
"United We Stand"
Student built: Lardo's BSU
team, "Wonder Woman and
Superman"
First timer's award: May
Hardware, "Statue of Liberty"
Home/family built: Aspen
Market, "Sweet Sippin' "
Child appeal: Hearthstone at
Spring Mountain Ranch,
"Hearthstone Bears"
Most photogenic: Burke
Family/Pancake and Christmas
House, "Santa arriving for
breakfast"
American Heroes: The Mill
Restaurant Slushers, "Of the
People, By the People, Forthe
People"
Honorable mention: Special
Olympians/Bryan's Burger
Den, "No Fear -Special
Olympians"
c6 o 5/o.IPS G7")2 f
/ / c Q .27
Annual McCall parade turns winter red,
white, blue
By Susan Whaley
The Idaho Statesman
Old Man Winter smiled on
the Mardi Gras Grand Parade
in McCall on Saturday.
The snow that had been
falling all morning stopped,
and the sun even peeked
through the clouds occasion-
ally, as the merriment snaked
through town for nearly an
hour.
The light-hearted parade is
the highlight of the 10-day Mc-
Call Winter Carnival, which
continues daily through next
Sunday, Feb. 3.
Many spectators say the
Mardi Gras parade is an an-
nual winter tradition they
wouldn't miss for the world.
Ed and Cindy Schiller of
Nampa introduced the event
to their first grandchild, Tay-
lor, who is almost 2 years old.
"We try to be here every
year for Winter Carnival,"
Cindy Schiller said. "We love
it."
Taylor, decked out in col-
orful strands of Carnival
beads, liked the animals and
especially the candy that was
tossed from passing floats, her
grandparents said.
"Grandpa's got a whole
pocketful," Ed Schiller said.
Like the ice sculptures that
dot the resort town, the pa-
rade had a distinctly patriot-
ic feel this year.
The perennial crowd fa-
vorite — a high-spirited drill
team calling itself the Wacky
Women — wore red, white
and blue outfits, waved flags
and danced. to Aretha
Franklin's "R-E-S-P-E-C-T."
This was the ninth year for
the Wacky Women, who
work for the Payette Nation-
al Forest in their saner mo-
ments.
Grand marshals were Val-
ley Council military veterans.
They were escorted by Mc-
Call police cars and fire trucks
that started the parade at
noon with an impressive ar-
ray of blinking lights, honk-
ing horns and blaring sirens.
Cat Hall of McCall enjoyed
the parade's dog sled teams,
a tradition that harkens back
to the Carnival's 1924 roots,
when dog sleds were a com-
mon form of transportation
in the mountain town.
"It was great they brought
it back this year," Hall said.
Parade Master of Cere-
monies Dennis Ackerman
said the size of the crowd
seemed the same as previous
years, despite snowier weath-
er and the crowd -drawing
Olympic torch celebration in
Boise.
"I was expecting it to be
visibly smaller, but it wasn't,"
Ackerman said of the McCall
crowd.
At IdahoStatesman.com
Read all about the McCall
Winter Carnival in a guide to
the festivities.
Susan Whaley / The Idaho Statesman
McCall residents show their patriotic spirit with flags and
music at the annual Mardi Gras Grand Parade, a crowd -
pleasing highlight of the annual McCall Winter Carnival.
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Since 1924, McCall carnival
has grown
What once was just
a sled -dog race now
is a two -week party
By Pat Thornton
Special to The Idaho Statesman
MCCALL — If the guy who
started it all could see it today,
he just wouldn't believe it. His
"baby" has grown from a sled -
dog race into the McCall Winter
Carnival, one of the biggest
tourist events in this part of the
world.
Not counting the Olympics,
that is.
It all began in 1924 under the
banner of the Payette Lakes
Sports Carnival, a three-day event
organized by a local merchant
who planned a mile -long sled -
dog race for young boy mushers,
then tacked on ski racing and
jumping, snowshoe races and a
snow -shoveling contest.
It was a grand affair that
brought the largest train ever to
he town — 248 passengers, in-
luding Gov. C.C. Moore. There
ere taxi -boat rides on frozen
Payette Lake, ski joring (being
towed on skis by a horse) and a
toboggan ride from the top of the
otel building that, if lucky, end-
ed on the lake across the street.
Over the next five years, the
sports carnival was reduced to a
single happening: the "ice break-
p contest." The winner was the
erson who guessed closest to
he day, hour and minute a bar -
el placed on the ice in the mid -
le of Payette Lake would float
and touch the shore. This chal-
enging event lasted until 1941.
Fourteen years and World War
I I would pass before the winter
arnival was revived in 1965. This
ime, according to Bob Scoles,
ho owned McCall Drugs and
as been quoted in several
ources as the carnival historian,
t was a community effort
sought by a group of business -
en to stimulate the mid -winter
conomy.
That core group, in addition to
toles, included Ted Harwood,
ayette Lakes Lumber Co.; Al
•
Schalfelberger, Idaho Power;
Danny DeFrancesco, The West-
ern Store; Don Boos, Shaver's;
Don McMahan, The Payette
Lakes Star (now The Star -News);
and Warren Brown, sawmill own-
er and the town's major employ-
er.
The weekend featured a torch-
light parade, talent shows, snow-
mobile races, ski events, daylight
parade, art exhibit, dancing, fire-
works and ... (ta dah!) snow
sculptures. Again, dreams were
bigger than reality. For example,
200 torches were prepared but
only about 20 were actually car-
ried because of subzero temper-
atures. The Saturday parade
through the center of town con-
sisted of the town's police car,
two or three floats, two oil -tanker
trucks with crepe paper, and the
high school band.
But 40 sculptures were carved
from blocks of snow. Scoles said
that carving method was not es-
pecially successful. "We spent
four hours on the first sculpture
trying to make something out of
a pile of snow," he said, "and af-
ter four hours, we still had a pile
of snow."
Nevertheless, there were a few
successes, simple as they were.
A wine glass. Cut-outs, mostly of
the state of Idaho. And the win-
ner was a relief carving of Shar-
lie, the mythical monster of
Payette Lake, done by McCall -
Donnelly High School Junior
Class. The prize: $25!
By 1993, Winter Carnival shed
its country fair character and the
city welcomed visitors with the
world's tallest snowman — a 100-
foot figure just south of town.
The crew at Shore Lodge is cred-
ited with the idea of building with
slush, thus enabling the gargan-
tuan and intricate creations of to-
day.
Winter Carnival has come a
long way, but not without con-
troversy. The most notable flap
sparked nationwide headlines in
1981. That was when Carl Whitak-
er and the LeMoine Brothers built
a replica of Mannekin Fountain
in Belgium that depicts a boy uri-
nating into a fountain. Some
charged it was obscene; others in-
sisted tearing it down would be
At right: Carnival sculptors de-
rive their inspiration from a mul-
titude of places. This figure,
carved in the early 1980s, repre-
sentsthe biblical hero Samson.
censorship. Winter Carnival of-
ficials finally caved in to a deluge
of complaints and had a backhoe
lift away the boy and fountain on
the day of sculpture judging.
Controversy or no, what one
wag calls "McCa11's annual con-
tribution to the Playtex Compa-
ny" has grown into a fantasyland
of characters and heroic figures
and scenes. And none of this
would have happened had not a
merchant wanted to stimulate
wintertime business.
But, like Sharlie, that merchant
remains a mvsterv.
Statesman file photos
Above: In 1986, ice -sculpture
carvers paid tribute to the crew
members of the doomed Chal-
lenger space shuttle with this
display and plaque.