While people in Southern Maine are starting to think about mowing the lawn, a cold wintry spring season persists up in Aroostook County. A group of residents close to the Canadian border is taking advantage of those conditions this weekend in an effort to break a world record.
Madawaska resident Mike Cyr chips away at a giant block of ice on a blustery day on Long Lake, one of the northernmost points in Aroostook County. Cyr works by day as a surveyor, but has spent a lot of time on this lake.
"And coming here is like a weekly, monthly event," he says. "Come here and have a little fun. It's beautiful."
Cyr says that winter brings out a small community of longtime residents who fish and snowmobile on the lake.
But last year, one local resident wanted to try something different: to design a frozen contraption called an "ice carousel." In a video recorded at the time, Cyr marvels at the large, turning disc of ice propelled by a boat motor.
To craft the carousel, dozens of residents used chainsaws and surveying equipment to carve out a large, frozen disc from Long Lake. They create a circular trench of about 10 inches, then make a hole near the edge of the disc and insert a boat motor to propel the 200-foot carousel and make it rotate.
"You have to think back to your childhood, when the merry-go-round was probably the funnest thing at the play park,” Cyr says. “You'd get on the merry-go-round, and the guy who could run the fastest would turn it as fast he could. Then everybody would jump on until you get all dizzy. And now, once it gets into your blood, you have to see it through and be successful."
Ice carousels may not be well-known in the United States, but they're growing in popularity in many Nordic countries. Finland even hosted the first ice carousel world championships in February, with 10 teams competing for cash prizes.
Building on last year's ice carousel initiative, Cyr wondered if the community near St. Agatha could take the project to the next level. So he wrote a letter to Guinness asking about a possible world record attempt.
"They sent me back a letter around mid-summer stating that this was not a thing that they would sanction and verify,” Cyr says. “There were certain inherent dangers, possibly, to the thing. So they said they were not interested in sanctioning it. However, they did say it was interesting. ‘We're going to keep it on our file. And maybe, someday, we'll consider it.’”
That was enough for the small crew in Northern Maine to keep going this winter. The current unofficial world record for an ice carousel is 122 meters across – about 400 feet. Cyr and company are trying to best that by about 30 feet, and over the past few months, they have carefully measured out a large perimeter on the lake, then drilled more than 1,300 holes through the ice.
"You can look all around,” Cyr points out hundreds of holes that have been drilled into a giant ice sheet. “This circle continues, all the way around, to the full perimeter...it's just a massive, massive undertaking. It almost rivals the pyramids, probably, for a modern-day comparison!" Cyr jokes.
A couple weeks ago, the crew went for the record. They managed to dislodge the giant disc from the lake. But by the end of the day, the temperatures dipped well into the negatives, too cold for chainsaws and motors to operate. They abandoned the effort, but they'll try again this weekend.
Cyr estimates that hundreds of residents may come out with their chainsaws, augers and motors for world record attempt number two. Even though the temperatures are warming up, Cyr says he's not concerned about the ice getting too thin.
"Every year, we ride snowmobile on this lake until April 20th," he says. "Every year, regardless of the weather downstate, they'll be mowing their lawns in Portland, and we'll be riding snowmobile around the 33-mile perimeter of this lake! It's great!"
Cyr says it will be ok even if they can't set the record. He says the effort has brought a lot of publicity, which has helped to raise thousands of dollars for local causes. And he says the ice carousel has created a sense of common purpose among the residents in a way that hasn't happened in a long time.
