Lukas Mertelik says he’s always liked building snowmen.
That’s not uncommon. What is uncommon is the fact he’s built one taller than his house.
“I think this is the biggest one I ever built,” he says. “It is quite a bit a of work, but it was fun. The end product makes everybody smile.”
Mertelik, who works for Fortis BC, spent the last few weekends building the snowman in the front yard of his Fort Nelson home, and finished it on Friday night. He says the last two winters he shoveled the snow into a giant mound and this year was motivated to step up his game.
“It’s tough building a snowman with dry snow,” he says. “You have to wait until it completely freezes over, and then it’s hard enough to do things with.”
Once his original snow mound had become solid, Mertelik used steel rods and plywood to solidify it, allowing him to better sculpt the pile. He then repeated the process with the top two balls and used plastic sheets and spray paint to accessorize the snowman.
He named the snowman “Fortis” after his employer because it reminded him of Frosty, and has been receiving accolades from friends and neighbours all weekend.
“People are stopping by and saying awesome. It makes people smile, that’s the big thing.”
Mertelik says he’ll keep Fortis up all winter long – and because he lives in a town that’s two hours from the Northwest Territories and 20 hours from Vancouver, that could be a long time.
“That’s one fun thing about living up north,” he says.
“You get to do things like this!”
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