To postscript an earlier wintry post, here are some awesome icy stalagmites sculpted by members of the Alaskan Alpine Club, where one can learn all the “non-standard stuff about mountain climbing.”



Admittedly, my interest in mountain climbing goes only so far as highly recommending the documentary Touching the Void and the neglected bergfilme of Leni Riefenstahl. I simply want to learn how to construct these monoliths.



And fortunately, the instructions seem pretty straightforward: first you attach your choice of nozzle head at the end of a garden hose and then “mix random parts of water and freezing air.” Sub-zero landscape architecture in no time.

Or if you adopt their uncompromising individualist philosophy and contempt of authority: arctic guerrilla gardening.



And then there's the upcoming 2018 Chicago Winter Olympics. Expect several of these colossal frozen spires standing side by side with the city's historic skyscrapers — one of which will be the venue for an as yet nonexistent winter sport. A skyline second to none. And for the sideshow, how about a WTC-esque twin installation at the mouth of the Chicago River? The site should still be empty.

Or farther afield, ridiculously vast fields of ice towers standing as a memorial to past and future glacial ages, where you can either do some climbing or ponder the question, what is the sound of an ice tower falling in the middle of a forest of ice towers?



It's amazing that no one has yet appropriated this freezing process to create X-treme Winter Vacation Hotspots. Better but still no less safer than K2. In Antarctica or Siberia or back in Alaska.

(All photos courtesy of the Alaskan Alpine Club.)