2012 Ice Arch - 90 Years of Engineering at UAF

27 February 2012
7:50 PM

Sunrise at	8:08 AM	in direction	108°	East-southeast
Sunset at	6:00 PM	in direction	252°	West-southwest

Duration of day: 9 hours, 51 minutes (6 minutes, 47 seconds longer than yesterday)


Our office looks out at the Flag quad. For the longest time, we wondered if they were actually going to build an ice arch this year.  Days passed and there was no apparent activity in the flag circle.  We wondered, if they started an arch later in the year, would it be done before it warmed. By the end of January, though, the circle had been blocked off with signs warning people out of the area. 

Then a scaffolding appeared and in a big way.

The frame for an arch is under construction - 1/26/2012

Then it stalled out.  We saw some sporadic work on the frame through out early February, but for the most part, it looked like not much was happening.  But by mid-February, clearly someone or some ones had been at work because the full frame was nearly completed:

Nearly complete arch frame, mid February, 2012

 Then blocks of ice began to appear along the sides of the arch.

Sides formed, waiting for the Keystone

The keystone soon followed, in this case a series of ice blocks that appeared to follow the line of a Jack Arch, but not quite. The ice block lines are vertical rather than slanted.  We looked over all arch examples we could find in, but none fit exactly.  Was it a modified Roman Arch?  Did they modify the shape of the arch to suit the medium of ice?  How could this arch stay up, we wondered? 

Individual blocks of ice forming the keystone clearly visible in the sunlight.

Larger blocks of ice at the base

Then all of our questions were answered. 

They constructed a true arch, made of individual blocks of ice instead of stone.  Despite our doubts, they knew what they were doing.  They are engineers, after all.  And, as a nice touch, the strung lights along the outside of the arch ...

Double click on image for full effect