LITTLE FALLS — Midday Saturday, the ice carousel was still missing one identifying component — the spinning — but the festival built around it was already in full swing.
The annual Sunny Zwilling Memorial Ice Carousel Extravaganza (or I.C.E. Fest) is in its fourth year and began Saturday at Green Prairie Fish Lake in Little Falls. The event, hosted by the nonprofit Pay It Forward Foundation, has raised approximately $36,000 in the past three years, including $15,000 in 2020. Becca Zwilling Ruegemer — who does most of the coordination work for I.C.E. Fest — said this year, their goal is to match that. Zwilling Ruegemer is also involved in the Pay It Forward Foundation alongside her father, Pay it Forward Foundation President Chuck Zwilling.
The money goes toward Flyer Pride Packs (a program that provides Little Falls elementary students struggling with food insecurity with extra meals and snacks for weekends) and Kare Kloset (a similar program at Little Falls Community High School).
The carousel team was out Saturday around noon to recut the ice channel that separated the carousel from the rest of the lake's ice cover in an effort to get it spinning. With temperatures below zero and a wind chill far lower, Chuck Zwilling was expecting even more ice to have covered the channel the seven-person team cut on Friday.
The cutting team used two "chainsaw chariots" (a wheeled rig that holds the chainsaw in cutting position) designed and built by Zwilling Ruegemer's husband, Mike Ruegemer, and operated by Mike Ruegemer and his friend, Bo Meyer.
"I saw an idea in Finland," Zwilling said. "He took that idea and put it on steroids."
To get the carousel to spin, they use four equidistant trolling motors, spaced about 30 feet each from the circle's edge, to make the carousel rotate — all in an effort to break their own 2020 record of a 749-foot diameter carousel.
The temperatures may have kept some away Saturday morning, but it didn't dissuade John Jewison from Staples, who was at I.C.E. Fest with his family (and on the group's second trip for hot chocolate).
Jewison said they'd been to I.C.E. Fest in previous years.
"We try to embrace winter as much as we can," he said. "We're dressed for it. We try to embrace it and all it has to offer for us, and this is one of the events that's around here. It's pretty unique."
He said the experience being out on the carousel when it's turning is "a little trippy."
"You'll be standing here talking like this, and all of a sudden you'll go to walk back and your vehicle's over there," he said.
But the spin isn't a surefire outcome; the team can do everything possible, like operating the motors and cutting as perfect a circle as possible, but the wind could push the disc off course.
"The ice-cutting is our job, but the spinning is really up to Mother Nature," Zwilling Ruegemer said.
Through their efforts at creating a yearly ice carousel in Little Falls, Zwilling and his family have met other major players in the international ice carousel world. Typically, World Ice Carousel Association Chairman Janne Kapylehto of Finland would be present at I.C.E. Fest, Zwilling said, as have other big ice carousel names in the past, but this year the pandemic put a damper on those travel plans.
But the traveling trophy awarded to ice carousels that break the size record will stay in Little Falls if the carousel spins. It didn't leave, since the record hasn't been busted since the I.C.E. Fest carousel last year, Zwilling said.
"I guess Becca will be giving it to me, or I'll be giving it to Becca," he said.
The record is now recognized by Guinness World Records, though previous applications were unsuccessful because the achievement was too specialized. But after several asks, the record was created in 2019, and the Green Prairie Fish Lake 2020 ice carousel broke that. (Zwilling said the initial record was also theirs, though it is not credited.)
The family got news of their 2020 record Jan. 13 — a month before they set out to bust it again.
The fundraiser started out of a 2017 family Christmas activity Zwilling planned in an effort to take the festivities outdoors. He saw a YouTube video of an ice carousel in Finland — created by Kapylehto — and picked that.
Zwilling's father was a logger and sawmill operator, so "we all owned and knew how to use chainsaws," he said.
That year, they cut a 54-foot carousel to test the concept. The following year, in 2018, it hastily became a fundraiser after garnering attention on social media.
The rest is ice carousel history.
Doing the carousel is really just for fun, Zwilling said. Now, the core reason they hold the event is the money raised by free-will donations to help area children.
"The thought of kids possibly not eating over the weekend, to me, is kind of crazy," Zwilling said.
Other activities at the weekend-long event included curling, sled rides, ice skating, igloo building and more. I.C.E. Fest continues on Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Related: The world's largest ice carousel? That's just the tip of the iceberg for Zwilling clan
Sarah Kocher is the business reporter for the St. Cloud Times. Reach her at 320-255-8799 or skocher@stcloudtimes.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahAKocher.
Participants take part in a curling demonstration Saturday, Feb. 13, 2021, at Ice Fest in Little Falls.[Photo Credit=Zach Dwyer, Zdwyer@stcloudtimes.com]
Remax sponsors a hot air balloon demonstration Saturday, Feb. 13, 2021, at Ice Fest in Little Falls.[Photo Credit=Zach Dwyer, Zdwyer@stcloudtimes.com]
Sled dogs wait to give rides Saturday, Feb. 13, 2021, at Ice Fest in Little Falls. - [Photo Credit=Zach Dwyer, Zdwyer@stcloudtimes.com]
Log rolling is available to practice at Ice Fest Saturday, Feb. 13, 2021, in Little Falls. - [Photo Credit=Zach Dwyer, Zdwyer@stcloudtimes.com]