Michele LeTourneau
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jan 15/99) - At the end of the month, the NWT Snow Sculpting team -- Bill Nasogaluak, as the captain, Pierre LePage, Annemieke Mulders and Yan St. Onge -- will fly off to Quebec for a national snow sculpting competition.

Nasogaluak is an old hand at sculpting, but snow sculpting presents its own special challenges that other materials do not.

For example, the daunting size presents a challenge, as the team will be starting out with a block of packed snow that is 3 metres by 3 metres by 3.5 metres.

"It's big," says Nasogaluak. "You're climbing all over this thing. Eighty percent of this is just physical work. The last eight hours or so deals with the artistic end of it."

The competition spans four days and sculptors work around the clock.

"You have to be in shape," stresses Nasogaluak. "You feel like you've shovelled two blocks of people's yards."

Temperature is definitely a factor. According to Nasogaluak, the ideal is -10 to -15 C. It is apparently not unusual for the weather to get too warm.

"I've had some snow sculptures fall apart the same day, the same afternoon," Nasogaluak says.

Those are conditions that are mostly unique to southern competitions. As the artist points out, in Northern snow sculpting, the mercury is more than likely dipping not rising.

"I've had to work up here when it's really, really cold. You deal with it."

Weight consideration is also a challenge for the team. They must ensure that their design stands up, that weight-bearing areas are strong enough to support the whole structure.

The teams' design -- sophisticated, incredibly delicate, uniquely Northern, and, according to the team, very challenging (not to mention a secret so far) -- was submitted to the selection committee in October.

"The idea is to challenge the material, to try to get to its limits," explains Nasogaluak.

Which brings us to snow quality. Snow blocks are assigned randomly.

"You pick out of a hat to get your block," says Nasogaluak.

Consistency is the mark of a good block. A bad block might have air pockets, debris, or chunks of ice.

With the possibility for so many potentially disastrous obstacles, improvising at the last minute is nevertheless not really an option.

"There are a lot of rules and regulations. The night before, you might be able to make a few small modifications -- if they are approved," says Nasogaluak.

Despite the wily nature of the work ahead of them, the team members are driven, excited and optimistic about their chances of winning the competition. The reason? The winner of the Canadian competition represents Canada at the Internationals.

Though they still need to raise $15-20,000 for this competition, they already plan on having a stone version of the snow sculpture to sell in order to finance the next leg of their journey.

The NWT team intends to go all the way.