SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Mark Heyck is the city's mayor and Bob McLeod is the territory's premier but Anthony Foliot is king of the snow and construction of his castle is not without road bumps to be overcome.

Crewmembers have 17 more days to complete construction on the Snow Castle before the Snowking Festival begins and cannot afford to be distracted by visitors according to Snowking Anthony Foliot. - Evan Kiyoshi French/NNSL photo

"It's not that much more outrageous than last year," said Foliot. "But we're trying new things all the time."

Extra-cold weather and a disobedient tractor leaves the the venue of the Snowking Festival with more work to do in the next 17 days before the castle opens its gates to the public. The snow castle opens to the public March 1.

Three-hundred-and-sixty pieces of ice stored on the lake next to his houseboat were cut in November and shaped with a homemade rasp, he said. When it's finished it'll be slightly bigger than the last building which boasted a 16-foot roof point making it the tallest North America snow structure of 2014, he said.

Foliot commends his crew.

"All of the architects come down and they give us an inspection ... they come and pat me on the back, and they say, 'Good job, Snowking,'" he said. "At first it used to give me a bit of a lift. But now it irks me because it's not just me. All of these guys are Snowkings in their own right. We're thinking of changing the name of the festival to a plural possessive ... to represent all of the kings here."

Foliot said he feels comfortable stepping away from some of his duties as king with so many hard-working members on his team and said he has downloaded many of his responsibilities onto the shoulders of ten-year snow castle veteran Ryan McCord -- the man other crew members call Joe Snow.

"It's my job to make sure all of the different parts of the construction get finished," said Snow, who has taken over the reins as build manager this year, from deep inside one of the arched-tunnels of the half-complete structure.

The castle includes an official wedding chapel - something that hasn't been part of the build since the ninth year of the project, he said. At least two members of the team are planning to tie the knot during the festival upon the advice of his majesty.

"We got a new volunteer this year and she said 'Snowking, I want to get married too.' I asked her 'When's that?' and she said 'April 4'. I told her 'Oh, my dear that's bad luck ... to get married outside of the festival.' So she changed her wedding plans," Foliot said with a chuckle.

The Snowking said he developed an interest in sub-arctic architecture 20 years ago.

"The children in my life, they started building a little snow fort and then we went out to help, me and Sir Shiver," he said. "After it got cold, the kids went inside to watch TV, and me and him, we kept on working. Then the next year, it got a bit bigger and then the next year it got a little bit bigger and moved out onto the ice. After about the fifth castle we decided to make a festival."

Trial and error and careful examination of Roman aqueducts and Gothic castles offered the formula used to build a sturdy structure out of frozen water, said Foliot.

"I didn't invent any of that ... and (there were) quite a few errors over time," he said. "The angle of the arch wouldn't be sufficient to distribute the weight and so the top would sag in. (But) because the snow is so dense ... we never had a cave in. We had stuff kind of leaning glacially slow but we perceived movement because we're intimate with the building. We know what's happening. For the most part, everything we've tried has worked."

Working on the castle is about inspiring people to be creative, according to Joel Maillet, a.k.a. the Avalanche Kid.

"We're ... entertaining an entire city for a month on nearly nothing," said Maillet. "And I think there's a lesson to be learned from that."

Maillet, who has been working with the Snowking for six-years, said he appreciates the expression of creativity through the snow sculpture, music, and theatre, synonymous with the festival.

"Snowking is one of my good friends now," Maillet said. "He can be hard to work with sometimes. He's got strong opinions but that's what's kept the castle going for so long."

"I used to work in the woods and when I'd get mad and get frustrated with what I was doing I'd take it out on those trees," Foliot said, while driving screws into a four-foot emergency door frame Monday. "But in the modern business there's no room for a guy that beats up trees with an axe."