SHOW ME THE WAY

Illuminated Track Marks

Course For Ski Racers

Call them tinkerers, label them geeks - but any way you look at it, engineer, Hal Galvin and architect, David Bryan have been very successful in developing a unique lighting system for the popular and fast-growing Luminary Loppet, a night cross country ski event held on Lake of the Isles in Minneapolis, MN.

And it is a relatively low-cost production which could add an attractive new dimension to winter carnivals in communities, everywhere.  Hal started the Luminary Loppet three years ago as a way to get average citizens involved in the Loppet weekend which primarily centers around a 35 km race for competitive skiers.

The first year, Hal's event attracted 300 participants, the second year 400, but sub-zero temperatures significantly reduced the field come race day. However, 2008, conditions were ideal and 2000 registered, establishing the Luminary Loppet as a 'real' event which is expected to grow substantially every year.

Since the inception of the Luminary Loppet in 2005, Hal and David simply lined the 4km course with ice block luminaries, about one cubic foot in dimension and placed one every 20ft along the course.

This year the couple challenged themselves to include two new features - a luminary pyramid and the 'Ice-Cropolis', an artistic array of hollow, 18in diameter ice columns increasing in height from 2ft up to 8ft.  The columns, 31 in number, contained internal frames for mounting candles to illuminate them from the inside.  Hal used his engineering background to calculate the arrangement of the ice columns so they would be aesthetically pleasing.

Says Hal 'For the technically-minded, the arrangement was based on the Fibonacci series, a geometric sequence of dimensions that are naturally pleasing to the eye.

Other challenges involved:-

- Figuring how to make the columns.  
Solution -  heavy-duty cardboard tubes used for pouring concrete forms.




· Working out how to make the columns hollow so they could contain a frame holding candles. 
Solution - so simple it didn't merit the weeks of head scratching to determine all sorts of complicated methods that were, in the end, abandoned.

· Protecting the ice from the sun on the south side.  Solution - wrapping the area in white paper.

- Making the columns stay in-place, since they would be too heavy to move, once frozen and how to seal the bottom of the tubes in the ice to form a seal to withstand the pressure of an 8ft high column of water without leaking. 




Solution -  use a heavy-duty router with
an 8in long, 7/8in end mill.













Spacing the luminaries caused a few headaches but again, Hal's engineering background came into play. He designed and built a machine which allows him to space the columns perfectly at 24ft intervals. 'Previously, spacing was eye-balled and the irregularities were picked up instantly', explains Hal.

'We named the machine the Pantoozelator as it looks like a gizmo from the Dr Seuse movie - the grinch that stole Christmas', explains Hal.

At 5pm the evening of the race, a team of 30 volunteers proceeded to light the 9ft high pyramid (120 luminaries), the Ice-Cropolis (120 candles on frames that were inserted through a hole in the top of each cylinder and the remaining 400 ice block luminaries that lined the 4km course around the lake.

Ninety minutes later, the course and the new features were brilliantly glowing to greet the skiers as they entered the lake from the starting line located on a snow-covered lagoon adjacent to the lake.

Festival organizers wanting to know more about Hal Galvin's luminary system should drop a line to advice@adviceinice.com.  Log on to www.cityoflakesloppet.com for details of all the different events held over the February weekend.